


To dream or not to dream

by omgbubblesomg



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blow Jobs, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bottom Steve Rogers, Canon-Typical Violence, Choking, Electrocution, First Time, Flashbacks, Forced Orgasm, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Blow Jobs, Not Canon Compliant, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Restraints, Temporary Character Death, Top Bucky Barnes, puppy kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2018-12-16 21:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 15
Words: 21,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11837538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omgbubblesomg/pseuds/omgbubblesomg
Summary: Bucky gets these nightmares. Awful memories. Hydra remnants. Sometimes the metal arm starts hurting him and Steve can’t stop it. Sometimes the arm makes Bucky do things…





	1. Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> Bug me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/omgbubblesomg)

Bucky’s dying. Again. His insides are on the outside. Wet. Gooey. Red like only blood can be. Red like Christmas. He thinks that maybe this is a dream. Or a nightmare. It can’t be a memory. Maybe. Maybe Hydra shoved so much ice into his body that there wasn’t room for anything else. Maybe they’ve cut him open to show him what the air feels like when it’s inside him.

There’s a guy next to him. White lab coat stained red. He’s saying something in Russian and though Bucky doesn’t hear it he can feel his lips moving to respond. The metal arm reacts, clenching at his side, and he watches as it starts scooping the sticky pile up, shoving it back in. There’s blood in the joints. He thinks he should hear someone cautioning infection, but the reprimand never comes. He’s watching the organs go back into the gaping wound where his belly used to be and it occurs to him that they’re not going to fit. It makes him laugh. Something slaps across his face but he laughs again. They’re not going to _fit._ His arm is shoving it all back in. Big piles of slippery red. And it’s not going to fit. He laughs so hard he can’t breathe. But he keeps going. Laughing and laughing. He can’t hear it but he thinks that if he could it would sound like a scream.

The metal arm shoves, shoves. He thinks maybe he can feel the things inside him settling back into place and he wonders how long it will take him to heal from whatever it is that was done to them. He wonders if it will hurt, and he isn’t surprised when he answers his own question with a yes. Everything always hurts.

The lab coat guy is handing him something. A needle and thread. And he’s speaking in Russian again and Bucky doesn’t even understand what he’s saying but the arm does. The arm takes the needle and he can only watch as it descends to his stomach, where the flesh is gaping wide. He hears his own laughter again because he’s never sewed anything in his whole life, that was Steve. Steve used to fix the patches at his elbows every winter and Bucky thinks that maybe this is different to that, but he can’t help it. The needle is already sticky-wet with his own blood but the arm just raises it. Lowers. Raises. It tugs at flesh that refuses to join. He tries to force it away, but it doesn’t belong to him. It’s Hydra’s arm. It’s doing its job. Stitching. Stitching. He can’t look away. That’s his own stomach. That’s his skin. His belly button is not where it’s supposed to be, an inch to the left, but the metal arm doesn’t care. It raises. Lowers. Stitches. He thinks maybe Steve would have done a better job. Steve with his little painter’s fingers making the thread invisible.

“I’ll get all the dames now,” he had said, admiring the patch-job out loud because it always made Steve blush. And it had. Steve’s cheeks reddening even as his eyes rolled.

“No lady’s gonna date you for your _elbows,_ Buck.”

“Well that’s just coz they ain’t _seen_ it yet, Stevie. I’m telling ya, they’ll go wild for this. They’ll be talking about it all up the coast. James Barnes’s elbows.”

Steve had blushed even fiercer and Bucky thinks maybe he can feel the warmth of that blush even here. The arm makes another stitch in his stomach and he thinks he can see how it’s all supposed to fit inside him now.

“If you think you can court Anne-Marie with that old thing then you’re dreaming,” Steve had said.

The needle is tightening on another stitch. The arm pulls it through. Not long now.

“Aw, come on, Stevie.”

“You’re dreaming, Buck.”

The arm goes back down, but it’s harder, now. One more to go. He struggles to reach the space.

“You’re dreaming.”

“Wake up.”

“Buck!”

“Bucky, WAKE UP!”

The arm finishes the last stitch, and Bucky looks up. He’s not in the lab anymore. But the blood is still there. It’s on the arm. And on Steve’s face.

Steve’s face.

Steve’s looking at him like he’s scared the world’s about to fall away and Bucky wants to grab that face and hold on to it forever but he can’t. He can’t grab Steve because _Steve’s_ grabbing _him._ Holding the arm in a death grip. Bucky thinks maybe that’s the only way the arm should be held. Like a weapon. It’s the only way _he_ should be held. In some nuke-proof box in the middle of the desert where no one can get close.

But he’s not in a box.

He’s in a bed.

And Steve’s holding the arm away from him, getting blood all over himself because the blood’s all over the arm and it’s _Bucky’s_ blood.

He looks down at his stomach and realises as he does that there are little cuts all over it, and bruises are starting to form in the shape of fingers. The metal arm did that. _He_ did that. At least the rest of it was a dream. At least here his insides are on the right side of his skin.

“ _Bucky,_ ” Steve says, all broken like Bucky’s body is hurting him, too.

“It’s fine,” Bucky tries to tell him, because it is. He doesn’t want Steve to be worried. “I was putting myself back together,” he explains, but it doesn’t sound right even to his own ears so he has to try again. “I was making it better,” he says.

“You were laughing, Buck,” Steve says, so quiet that Bucky would have missed it if he was anyone else. Laughing is a good thing, Bucky thought, but Steve’s face makes him think that maybe this is not the good kind of laughing.

Steve’s still holding his arm.

“Yes,” Bucky agrees, because agreeing with Steve is usually the thing that makes Steve happy, but right now it’s not working because Steve’s face sort of crumples and Bucky doesn’t know what to do to make that better.

“It was a nightmare, Buck. You were dreaming. You were clawing at yourself.”

Bucky looks at his right arm but it’s pristine. He looks at the other arm, the one that Steve’s still holding, and it’s covered in his blood.

“Yes,” he says again, because he can’t think of anything better to say and it’s true anyway.

“What was it about, Bucky?”

“Hydra,” Bucky replies, and then he pulls his arm out of Steve’s and decides to have a shower before breakfast.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oookay so this is my first fic in this fandom pls be nice o.O


	2. Steve

Tony’s grin is wider even than the lobby of his tower. Which is saying something. “Well if it isn’t our very own Grandpa Spangles,” he calls. “Heya, Cap. How’s the honeymoon?”

“Holiday,” Steve corrects, “and, not great, actually.”

“Trouble in paradise? Well listen, I’ve got a big ol’ loveseat upstairs that’s all yours if you just say the magic words.”

Tony had been trying to convince Steve to move in for months. Keep all the Avengers together, he said, though Steve thought it was to keep Bucky somewhere he could be monitored. Steve didn’t like the way Tony stared at the metal arm, like he was a kid in a candy store and there was only one jawbreaker left.

“Tony,” he warns, but he doesn’t get far.

“Seriously, Cap, the bed is huge. More than enough room for two centenarians to do the horizontal mambo. And I can get champagne on tap. You like champagne, right? Nice stuff. French.”

Steve sighs, because he likes champagne, but not for the same reasons that Tony does. It doesn’t get him drunk. “Tony,” he starts again, but Tony isn’t done.

“Got a shower like you wouldn’t believe, Cap. Three different faucets and hot water for days. Big enough for two.” He winks. “Or ten.” He winks again.

“I hardly think—”

“You and your boyfriend will love it. Get all that ice out of your ears, whatdya say?”

“Bucky isn’t my—”

“Come on, Cap, what do I gotta do to convince you to stay? Want the penthouse? It’s yours. New wardrobe? Done. Your wish,” he snaps his fingers, “is my command.”

Steve sighs, opens his mouth, sighs again. “Well,” he says. “The penthouse might be a bit much, but if you’ve got two rooms spare, Buck an’ I would love em.”

To his credit, Tony only gapes for ten seconds before regaining his composure.

“You’re serious?” he says, and Steve can _see_ little lights going off in his head.

“ _Two_ rooms,” he clarifies. “With _two, separate_ _beds._ ”

“Hey, now—”

“Bucky and I are _friends,_ Tony.”

Tony waves him away. “No need to prove your all-American hetero masculinity to me, Captain Tightpants.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “That’s the _uniform,_ ” he defends, for the thousandth time.

“It’s _distracting,_ is what it is,” Tony fires back without missing a beat. “So, can I expect you and Mascara Man this month, or…?”

“Actually,” Steve winces, “can we move in earlier? Like… tonight?”

“Uh oh,” Tony gestures Steve to a comfy sofa in the corner. “Something tells me I’m not gonna like this, am I?”

“It’s, uh… Well, it’s Bucky.”

“Obviously.”

“Stop it, Tone. I’m being serious. Bucky has these… nightmares.”

“No judgement here, Cap. We all get em.”

“Not like this, you don’t. They’re…” Steve shudders. “They’re _awful._ He wakes up screaming almost every night, and…” he shudders again.

Tony waves at one of the receptionists and makes a gesture that sends her swiftly into a side room. She emerges half a minute later with a glass decanter of what looks like brandy.

“You know I can’t get drunk,” Steve sighs as Tony pours him a hefty drink.

“No harm in trying,” Tony replies, and Steve can’t argue with that, so they toast silently and he throws it back.

It doesn’t get him drunk.

But he keeps talking anyway.

“It would be all right if it was just the screaming,” he says, “but sometimes he doesn’t scream at all, and that’s even worse. He _hurts_ himself, Tony. He almost clawed out his insides the other week, and this morning his fingers were all swollen and when I asked him what happened he said he’d had to punish himself. Two of them were _broken,_ Tony. He broke his own fingers because of a fucking nightmare.”

Tony didn’t even rib him on his language.

Steve scrubs at his face. “When he screams I can get there in time, y’know… wake him up. But the silent ones, they’re not… they don’t wake me up, and then I can’t help him.

“So,” Tony says, “you want him here to keep him under surveillance?”

“ _No,_ Tony, Jesus. He’s my _friend._ I can’t… can’t _spy_ on him. I just want him safe, okay? With the others nearby in case… in case anything happens.”

“And what, pray tell, are you afraid of happening?”

Steve fiddles with his empty glass until Tony refills it. “I’m scared he’ll hurt himself,” he admits. “Bad. I’m scared it’ll be too bad for me to fix.” Tony hums. Steve grits his teeth and continues. “I’m scared he’ll do something while I’m sleeping, and I’ll wake up one morning and there won’t be anything of him left.”

“Dramatic, much?”

“I know it sounds crazy, Tone, but if you could see them…”

Tony sighs, and starts tapping at a screen that pops into existence above his watch. “Anything else I should know?” he asks.

“There can’t be any technicians nearby,” Steve insists. “Or doctors.”

“Yeah, yeah, no lab coats, I know the just-got-tortured-by-scientists drill. I meant the _room,_ do I need to organise anything specific for the _room?_ ”

“The bed,” Steve says. “It needs to be strong.”

Tony waggles an eyebrow and despite the seriousness of their conversation Steve can’t help his blush.

“For Bucky,” he clarifies. “For the nightmares.”

“He needs a reinforced bed for _nightmares,_ huh?”

“Shut up, Tony. Can you help or not?”

“Friday,” Tony says, “floor twelve?”

The AI’s voice comes out of nowhere. “My thoughts exactly, Sir.” A blue floorplan illuminates in the air between them, and Tony starts to show Steve the layout of his new home.

 

 


	3. Steve

The move goes about as well as might be expected. Bucky puts up exactly zero argument, and Steve aches as he remembers a time when Bucky would have fought tooth and nail not to go. He gets a brief flash of longing, but it’s gone as soon as it arrives. It’s not Bucky’s fault that he’s forgotten how to argue. If anyone is to blame, it’s Steve, for not jumping off that freight train too. Bucky had spent decades being remodelled into a living weapon while Steve had slept in the ice.

Steve’s nightmares are always cold, now. The ice is packed in above his head and his hands are frozen solid around a gearstick. He can’t shout. Can’t move. He’s cold, cold, cold, and even when he wakes up covered in sweat he wraps himself in his blanket and trembles.

Bucky’s nightmares are never cold. Even the silent ones. When he screams, he screams in Russian, sometimes English. Sometimes not in any language, though Steve understands him anyway. He staggers into the room, barely awake himself, and hauls Bucky upright, dodging the metal fist until Bucky wakes up too. Bucky is always hot, skin like a furnace against Steve’s hands as he tries to bring him back. Afterwards Steve just holds him and Bucky clings to his arms, his shirt, the back of his neck. He never says anything, but it’s enough, just their arms in the dark. Bucky rises with the sun. Just a little bit at a time. And they don’t talk about it, though Steve wants to beg.

The silent ones are worse, of course. Steve has only intercepted three, but the metal arm had fought him each step of the way, until Bucky’s open, unseeing eyes had refocused on his face.

Bucky won’t let Steve touch him after those ones.

Tony, thank God, doesn’t mention the nightmares. He chatters the whole way up about where to find food, extra pillows, cleaning products. He’s on his best behaviour, doesn’t mention reinforced beds or hot tubs or loveseats. Steve wonders if it’s the blank, expressionless way that Bucky stands, slightly behind Steve’s left shoulder. Bucky doesn’t have any weapons on him but he doesn’t have to. He _is_ a weapon, and maybe that’s why Tony runs his mouth as he shows them how the TV works. Steve wants to explain on Bucky’s behalf. _He’s not always like this. He likes pancakes in the morning. He remembers my mother’s name._

He doesn’t say that, though. Just lets Tony show them around level twelve.

(“We don’t need a whole floor,” Steve had tried to argue, but Tony had pointed out that it would have been unwise to house anything else on the same floor as an ex-murderer super soldier who occasionally demolished a room or two. Steve had been forced to concede the point.)

As Tony shows them the kitchen, Steve tries not to think about how easy it would have been for Tony to say no. He tries not to think about the debt he now owes. His ma had never accepted help from anyone, and Steve had inherited the same mindset. Never take what you can’t return. Tighten your belt before you open your hand.

But this is _Bucky,_ and Steve would rather face a glacier than deny help when it was available.

“Thanks, Tony,” he says, when Tony runs out of things to show them.

“It’s nothing,” Tony waves off. “Doing a service to New York, I think, Cap.” He eyes the way Bucky stands in the corner, arms behind his back. Ready to be useful. “If you need anything, just ask Friday,” he says, falsely cheerful, and then he’s disappearing back into the elevator and Steve and Bucky are alone on the twelfth floor of Stark Towers.

Bucky relaxes when he’s gone. “Nice digs,” he says. Steve is inclined to agree. He pretends not to notice how none of the furniture has sharp edges.

They have a pitifully meagre supply of clothes. And it’s all Steve’s anyway. Bucky’s wearing Steve’s things because Steve doesn’t like the idea of a shop—or any enclosed space, really—where civilians can get too close. A part of him likes Bucky in his clothes, anyway, but he dutifully calls that part ‘friendship’ and ignores the way his stomach tightens when Bucky shrugs into one of his shirts, too tight across the shoulders. It’s just because he likes seeing Bucky in colours other than black. That’s all it is.

They unpack silently, in their separate rooms, and shower silently, in their separate showers, and Steve makes two cups of tea, like he used to do before the war, when tea was just a few leaves in tepid water before bed. He knocks at the door to Bucky’s room, carefully juggling the steaming mugs, and when Bucky opens it he’s in a pair of Steve’s old sweatpants. Grey and worn thin and slung low. His skin is still damp from the shower and Steve _does not look down._ He’s giving Bucky privacy. In fact he stares pointedly at Bucky’s face, so intently that he almost misses the “Thanks” that slips past Bucky’s lips as he accepts the mug.

In the other time, before the war, when Steve was still Steve and Bucky was still Bucky, they would have tapped the old chipped mugs together and drunk them side by side, laughing at whatever shenanigans Bucky had gotten up to during the day. Or else Bucky would ask to see what Steve had painted, or drawn, and Steve would blush but get his notebook anyway.

That doesn’t happen now.

He says, “Good night,” and Bucky closes the door between them.

He tosses his tea down the sink.

_I miss you._

_I miss you._

_I miss you._

In the privacy of his own room, he asks Friday to go over the security settings. Again.

“And you’ll know if he… if something goes wrong?”

“Certainly, Captain Rogers. I’ll be monitoring his heart rate, breathing patterns, temperature fluctuations. Once he’s been here long enough I can analyse his circadian rhythm for any irregularities that could give us advance warning if a nightmare occurs.”

Steve knows this. Tony had told him already. But he checks and rechecks. It feels like spying. It _is_ spying. That’s his _friend_ in the other room. There’s only one hallway between them but the distance is greater than mere geography.

He thanks Friday—a task that feels unnatural no matter how often he does it—and gets into bed.

In the end the AI doesn’t have to wake him. Bucky’s screams do the job just fine. Steve’s up before his eyes have fully opened, one step to the door, another across the hall, and he doesn’t even knock, barrels in, fists raised like there’s going to be an enemy in there. But it’s just Bucky. Bucky screaming on the floor, body tense, arms flailing.

Steve shakes him awake and tries not to feel relieved that it’s just one of the screaming nightmares, not the awful silent ones. They stay on the floor, side by side, with Steve’s arms around Bucky’s shoulders. Until the sun rises. As it always does. Just a little bit at a time. Bucky’s skin is furnace-hot.

The same thing happens the next week, and then twice in a row, that weekend. Steve learns to sleep with his door open, so he can exit the room faster.

Three weeks after they’ve moved in, Steve isn’t woken by screaming. The lights flash on. Friday’s voice comes from nowhere. “Captain Rogers,” the AI says, and Steve doesn’t wait for what comes next. He’s already gone. Shouldering into Bucky’s room on instinct.

Bucky isn’t screaming. He’s not even moving. Lying on his back with his eyes open, as if he’s awake. He’s wearing the grey sweatpants. His skin looks pale in the bright light that Friday has turned on. Steve takes in the scene with a glance, and his lungs are suddenly empty of oxygen.

The metal arm is raised above Bucky’s prone body, bent at the elbow, reaching down. Its fingers are around Bucky’s throat.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I ever write a fic without at least one cliffhanger, assume that I have died and someone else is writing in my place.
> 
> Also next chapter has some not-nice things (please see tags). So tap out now if that's not your jam.
> 
> (If it _is_ your jam then omg let's be friends)
> 
> Edit 31/8/17 guys my laptop was stolen on tuesday. I swear the next chapter is ready to go and it will be posted as soon as i get a new laptop or the old one is returned. This fic is on dropbox so dont worry it wasnt lost :)


	4. Bucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. If you saw my update on the last chapter you’ll know that my laptop was stolen. I now have a replacement and will return to your regularly scheduled updates! This chapter starts on some of the darker parts of this fic so please be warned.

He’s awake. He’s surrounded by those snakey things. Cloth cords. The name takes a moment to come to him. Shoelaces, they’re called. Two dozen of them. He is forgetting the English word for things. He is not supposed to know that they are shoelaces. He is not supposed to know anything. He is supposed to obey. He is supposed to submit. He is doing his best, really. Under the table, on his knees. He doesn’t remember arriving at this point, but he’s not supposed to. He is supposed to stare at the floor and at the shoelaces winding through heavy black boots as they shift restlessly.

Docile. Another word that he has forgotten, though not the meaning of it.

He feels a hand at the back of his head, someone directing him to turn towards a pair of legs. Bucky cannot see the body that the legs belong to. He is not supposed to think about anything except what he can see in front of him, and for a moment the legs are just legs, just disembodied limbs, but then the hand makes him shuffle closer and he can smell them now, too. _Starch,_ he thinks. _Old blood._ He thinks he remembers hands scrubbing stains out of old clothes— _keep yourself outta trouble, Stevie_ —but the hands are both flesh, can’t belong to him, and the memory ends there.

He doesn’t resist. He doesn’t. He goes where the hand directs him. His cheeks are held by thighs. There is cloth in front of his face. He is not resisting. The hand draws him closer. There is laughter from above him and he doesn’t get the joke. The sound of a zipper. More laughter. His nose against hairy flesh. There is no such thing as _want_ anymore. He has long since rescinded any _want._ But he thinks that maybe there was a time that he did want this. Though not with these disembodied legs. Someone smaller.

There is something on his lips. A voice in English telling him to open. _Yeah Brock, feed it to him._  He is not resisting. There is something on his tongue. It brushes past his teeth. If it were food he would swallow, but it’s not food. It goes down anyway. Bumps the back of his throat. His jaw spasms.

A loud noise, and suddenly he is not beneath the table anymore. There is blood in his mouth. “нeт,” screams a voice, and then again, in English. “No!”

Bucky has disobeyed. He knows this like he knows his own body. From a distance. His teeth moved without his permission. Without _their_ permission. _He bit me,_ someone screams. A boot lands in his gut. Another against his cheek. He is not resisting. He has earned these boots and their shoelaces and the imprints that they will leave. He will do better next time now that his jaw knows the penalty for disobedience.

They will give him another chance. They will push him back beneath the table but they don’t trust him anymore, so they order him. In Russian. He is learning this language slowly, but he doesn’t have to know the words to obey them. The arm knows what it has to do. Keep his mouth open. Punish him. It moves of its own accord. Clamps around his throat, squeezes hard, and Bucky didn’t realise he was going to have his oxygen cut off. If he had then maybe he would have gasped deep before. He will make do. The disembodied legs are back. Different ones, this time. Or maybe the same. He focuses on keeping his heart rate low. Conserving oxygen.

He is calm. He can obey. The metal fingers don’t tighten or release. They are implacable.

He uses his other hand to shuffle closer, sets his face in the same place, with the thighs bracketing his cheeks. He smells the same smell. Skin, and sweat. Unwashed hair. He is desperate for air but they must know this because they are laughing again. His mouth is gaping open, trying instinctually to gasp. Implacable fingers. He barely feels it this time. His lips have gone numb. At the last second the fingers release partially and he chokes in a meagre supply of air around the flesh that fills his mouth. It makes the flesh twitch. Someone says something about stimulation. Or maybe Bucky imagines it. Laughter. The fingers tighten again. His tongue feels fat and swollen and he tries to use it like he has been taught.

Dexterous. Another word that he had forgotten until now.

His tongue is not dexterous. It is clumsy and numb. He directs it as best he can. The metal fingers give him another taste of oxygen. There will be bruises on his neck for a long time after this. He will be allowed to remember them. This is a punishment. And a lesson. Something warm floods his mouth. He does not have air to cough it out. A door bangs open.

“Bucky!”

He’s dreaming. He must be. Steve’s face is above him. But it is not Steve in his mouth. It never is, though it should have been. How many times had he replaced the space that Steve should have filled? Pretty girls in lipstick. Men in back alleys. Hydra as well, now. He is running out of oxygen and his brain is letting him believe that it is Steve’s hand at the back of his head, moving him. Holding him. Rearranging him in front of another pair of shoelaces. Another pair of boots. Black pants. A zipper.

“Buck! Bucky! Bucky, wake up!”

Steve doesn’t wear black. Never has. He is always in white. Or blue. Even before. Red lips. American Steve, wearing the flag even before he was Captain.

The fingers at his throat are meeting resistance so they have to squeeze harder. Bucky must finish his job before they will loosen again. There are twenty-four shoelaces under this table. Math is hard. So is the flesh in his mouth as it twitches and spurts. He has 10 pairs of shoelaces to go.

“Friday!”

A funny thing to say in this moment. Bucky’s vision is going grey at the corners. Friday. He thinks he has to work this weekend. Winter’s almost here, and Steve will get sick, like he does every year. Bucky’s gotta get the extra money. He’ll work at the docks… Or maybe he already is. There is something in his mouth.

The fingers loosen slightly. Something is pulling them apart, and Bucky gets a shock of oxygen that he hadn’t expected. He is not at the docks. He is under a table. The fingers close again. He is being moved. Passed around.

“The Avengers have been called, Captain,” says a woman’s voice.

“Hurry!”

That’s Steve again. He wants Bucky to go faster. Bucky can’t breathe but he would do anything for Steve. Even underwater or passed out or frozen solid. He hurries. Moves his tongue. This man is too big for him. The fingers squeeze tighter, forcing his jaw open, even wider, and the flesh moves like sandpaper across Bucky’s lips.

“Bucky, please! Wake up!”

There are two Bucky’s. One Bucky is under the table. Doing something he is good at. Obeying orders. This is the real Bucky. The other Bucky is lying down. Steve is above him. It is a nice dream. Though Bucky would prefer another look on Steve’s face. Something warmer. Not so frightened. Steve’s hands are at his throat, too, and that’s right. Steve is punishing him. Hydra is punishing him. He disobeyed. Steve is straining, straining. So is the flesh in his mouth. He has forgotten that oxygen tastes of anything other than skin.

“Buckyyyaa _aaargh!_ ” His name ending on a shout.

The fingers retract fractionally. They are being forced open again. Steve is straddling his thighs. His hands are on the metal arm. Pulling. Yelling. He is sitting on Bucky. Though not in the good way. Bucky feels heavy beneath him. He is being passed along. Scuffed boots. Not shiny. A common soldier. Doesn’t feel so common in his mouth. He is getting more oxygen, now. He can feel fingers beneath the hand. Something in between the metal and his throat. How unusual.

Something blasts into the room. Bucky’s forehead is pressing against a hairy stomach. The hairs are tickling his nose. He can breathe, somehow. Wheezing slips of air in the open sliver of trachea that he has been allowed.

“Tony! His hand!”

There are more fingers at his throat. They are metal, too. Metal on metal. He is stronger than them both, though. The oxygen has revived him. The metal arm knows its orders. The fingers retract. No more oxygen. He is being good. Someone screams.

“Bucky! No!”

He will be allowed to breathe when he is done. He has lost count. Seven more? Eight? He is being good. The metal arm will make sure that he obeys.

“Nat, electrify the arm!”

“Not while you’re holding—”

The two Bucky’s are just one again. Steve is screaming at him.

“ _DO IT!_ ”

Pain. A shout.

Darkness.

 

 


	5. Steve

Steve wakes slowly. He hurts. He tries to scrub at his face but his arms are heavy. He tries again.

“Don’t move them,” someone says, and Steve blinks his eyes open.

And jerks back.

Nat’s face is about an inch above his own.

“Jesus, Nat,” he says. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Don’t move your arms,” she says, in lieu of hello. Steve looks down to where she is holding his wrists against the bedspread. There are white bandages extending from the tips of his fingers up past the sleeves of his hospital gown.

Tony’s hand lands on his chest at the exact moment that he remembers, so that when he tries to sit up he is effortlessly pushed back down.

“Listen to your nurse, Cap.”

“Bucky!”

“He’s fine,” Tony soothes. “Asleep.” His hand doesn’t leave Steve’s chest and Steve is simultaneously glad and enraged.

“Let me up,” he orders. “Let me see him.”

Tony’s other hand moves to push his chin to the side. Bucky is on the bed next to his. Eyes closed, breathing slowly. His metal arm is cuffed to the wall. Thick metal, hopefully too thick even for him. Steve’s blood boils when he sees it—that’s his best friend in handcuffs—but he breathes a sigh of relief as well. He wants to believe that nothing’s going to get past that cuff. Bucky’s gonna be fine. If they’re in a hospital he hopes that someone warned the staff about lab coats, too.

He relaxes, and Tony backs off. Nat lets go of his wrists, too.

“I’m impressed,” she says, one eyebrow perfectly arched. “You were only out half a day. That was enough electricity to take down an elephant.”

“I can tell,” he groans. Now that he’s awake he feels like he’s aged a few hundred years. The thud of his heart sounds a little off-key. He twitches a finger experimentally and pain shoots up his arm. “Nat, bloody hell, did you take my whole hand off? It feels like my arms have been incinerated.”

“Sorry,” she says, not looking sorry at all. “I had to use double to take him out, since you were holding on as well.”

“It worked though,” Steve murmurs. It’s not the best solution, but it’s something. Some way to fight the monster that’s living in Bucky’s head. It’s important, somehow, that he was knocked out too. That Bucky didn’t have to suffer alone. He’s surprised that Nat even took the risk, though, and he says as much.

“I think we were all surprised,” Tony says, then adds with a snigger, “though not as _shocked_ as you.”

Steve opens his mouth to say something, but Tony cuts him off.

“Before you ask, no, I can’t take the arm off. Not yet.”

“He almost strangled himself, Tone.”

“Sorry, Cap. My scanners can’t get through the outer plating. I don’t know what’s in there. It could blow him up. It could blow _me_ up, and you know how much I hate being blown up.”

“That’s not all,” Nat says. She pulls up a chair to sit in between Steve and Bucky. It’s a casual gesture, but Steve thinks that she’s done this on purpose. A barrier between them. He’s not going to like this.

Tony taps at his watch, and a screen appears in front of Steve. There are some graphs, and a few coloured lines zigging and zagging across a grid. One of them is labelled ‘Cardiac.’ Another, ‘Respiratory.’

“What am I looking at?” he asks, bewildered.

“That’s Bucky,” Tony says, pointing. “When he’s awake. More pronounced than the average person, same as you. Super soldier metabolism.” He makes a movement with his hand and the graphs change. There are sharp lines everywhere. “And this is what he looks like when he’s having a nightmare. Heart rate increases. Breathing. Eye movement. Muscle contractions. That’s the decibel meter over there, but you already knew that.”

“Why are you showing me this?”

Tony sighs, and makes another movement. It’s the first screen again. “This is what he looked like last night,” he says.

Steve blinks at Tony, and then at the screen. That doesn’t make any sense. All the graphs are normal. “I… I don’t understand.”

“He was awake, Steve,” Nat says. “It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“All the same vitals,” Tony adds. “Except for respiration, obviously.”

Steve shakes his head. He wants to touch the graphs but when he moves his hand his arm spasms violently. The screen disappears.

“That’s not Bucky,” he says. Because it can’t be. He saw Bucky with his own eyes. Unmoving on the bed, with the metal fingers tightening around his throat. He can’t have been _awake._ No one does that to themselves. Not in their right mind.

But Bucky’s not in his right mind. Steve looks across at him. Handcuffed to the wall so he won’t hurt himself.

“Friday,” says Tony. “Show him.”

A screen pops up. A different one this time. It’s a video. Bucky’s lying on a bed, eyes open, and Steve recognises the room from level twelve. The metal arm lifts suddenly, and goes straight for Bucky’s throat. Bucky’s mouth opens, but he makes no other reaction. Steve feels the same horror as he had last night. The timer at the bottom left of the screen ticks. Bucky is choking. How long is too long? He watches as a miniature version of himself bursts into the room. The video-Steve jumps on the bed, grabbing at the metal arm, wrenching it backwards. He hears himself begging Friday for help, _Hurry,_ and then Tony is there in the suit, hands going to the same place as Steve’s, all three of them locked in an unmoving battle. In the video, Nat whips in, and Tony pulls the suit free a second before Steve gets scorched. The video ends in a wash of electric feedback.

“Wha—” Steve says.

“Watch him,” Tony says, and then he’s replaying the video, zoomed in on their faces. Bucky’s mouth opening as the metal arm closes over his windpipe. Steve’s lips moving as he begs. _Wake up._ Bucky’s face moving towards the sound of his voice.

“He was awake, Cap,” Tony says. Quietly. Sadly. “He could hear you, and he reacted.”

“Hurry,” says the video version of Steve, and Bucky’s mouth moves soundlessly in reaction.

“I don’t understand,” says Steve. He sounds hollow. He’s been carved out.

“We think it could be a flashback,” says Tony. “Or something similar.”

“How is that different from a dream?” His voice is a thousand miles away.

“He’s not just remembering something, or dreaming it. He’s actually there, in his mind.” Tony taps his watch. The graphs come back up. “Technically, he should have the same output as he does when he’s dreaming, or at least something similar, but I’m guessing Hydra broke down fear responses like that, so he’d obey without question. Look, his adrenaline doesn’t even spike. Not one bit. He’s reliving it.”

“But… but his arm… If he was awake he could’ve just…”

Tony and Nat share a look.

“I have a theory about that as well.” Tony shifts restlessly. He’s not in his Iron Man suit. He’s not even in a regular suit. He’s wearing jeans. His shirt has a patterned design on it. Trees. Steve stares at the trees while Tony’s voice keeps talking. He can hear the words, though they don’t make any sense. “The arm doesn’t belong to Bucky,” Tony says. “It’s Hydra’s arm.” Steve shakes his head. Tony keeps going. “When he relives his time with them he’s getting orders, right? And the arm obeys.”

Steve is suddenly aware of Bucky’s presence like he hadn’t been before. There is a human being in the bed next to his. His best friend. Broken and fixed and broken again to be… _used_ … Someone had forced his body into compliance. Someone had removed the bits they didn’t like. They had made it so he couldn’t disobey.

Tony’s hand is back on his chest. “Easy, Cap,” he cautions. Steve is trembling like he’s just run a marathon. His body is way too hot, then way too cold. He could rend metal. He could scream down a jet plane. Air drop him into a Hydra base, he thinks. He’d rip them to shreds. He wouldn’t even need his shield. Bare fists and blood and the same amount of mercy that they’d shown to Bucky.

He’s babbling. He’s going to kill them. Worse than that. He’s going to rip the flesh from their faces. Their eyes from their sockets. He sees a nurse approach with something in a needle. They’re gonna put him under. It won’t last long. The serum burns through everything. He’s going to burn through everything, too. He’s going to strap them into the chair and shove them full of ice and fear. See how they like it. He needs it like he needs oxygen. He’ll die without it. Nat’s holding his wrists again. He can’t even feel the pain any more.

“I’m going to kill them,” he promises Tony, who smiles sadly at him as his vision tunnels into nothing.

 

 


	6. Steve

The next time he wakes it’s to Bucky’s face, smiling across at him from the next bed. The metal arm is in the cuff and Steve feels a brief flash of something, maybe anger, before it puddles away. The drugs are still in his system, though draining fast. The light from the window is bright. He’s only been out for a few hours.

“Hey,” he says.

Bucky smiles back at him. “Heya, punk.”

In the old days, before the war, he would have said something cheeky. _Lotta nurses round here, Stevie._ It would have been easy. This new Bucky doesn’t say anything else, but Steve has already mourned the passing of the old Bucky, and he won’t do it again. He’s one of the lucky ones. They found each other again even after all this time. Of course Steve misses what it was like, how could he not? This Bucky is quiet, and solemn. Not so easy to laugh, though when he does it makes Steve’s spine tingle. Not so easy to smile, which makes each one more precious. The way Bucky’s head tilts _just so,_ as he watches the sun rise, like he’s surprised each time. Just a little bit at a time. The way his forehead finds Steve’s shoulder. So yeah, he misses the old camaraderie, but he wouldn’t change things back to the way they were. Not for anything.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“Like a million dollars.” Bucky rolls his eyes in a way that tells Steve he is feeling anything but. At least he’s calm, even with the metal cuff. When he gives Steve a small smile it doesn’t look forced. Steve can see bruises on his neck.

He wiggles his fingers and finds that they are stiff and sore, though not as excruciating as when he had last been awake. He gingerly starts removing the bandages. The skin beneath them is pink and raw, as though it’s new. It probably _is_ new. It’s so tender that he can feel the air moving against it. There are scars, quickly fading, streaking up his arms. Bucky is not smiling when he sees them.

“Not your fault,” Steve tells him. He doesn’t expect a reply, and he doesn’t get one. Steve wonders if he can heal from electrocution if it happens every night. Probably, but he doesn’t really want to find out. “We’re going to have to rethink the sleeping situation,” he sighs.

Bucky shrugs, indicating the cuff. He thinks he’s found the solution already.

“You can’t just lock nightmares up,” Steve says sadly. Someone taught Bucky to fix problems with metal.

“Won’t be the nightmares that are locked up,” Bucky replies. Steve so rarely gets to hear his voice, and it breaks his heart that it’s here, with Bucky restrained, instead of in their own rooms, sipping tea or maybe watching television. He wants to hear that voice when they’re alone, not in hospital beds.

“No, Bucky,” he says instead, trying to make it gentle. Bucky turns away from him. Steve’s about to say something else when a loud _bang!_ echoes from outside the room, followed by the tinkling of broken glass. A dropped trolley, Steve thinks. The noise is loud in the hushed quiet of the hospital, and it makes Steve jump, but it makes Bucky jump even harder, wrenching the cuff clear off the wall, chunks of plaster raining down after it. Steve barely has enough time to process it— _oh, okay, guess the cuffs won’t work after all_ —before Bucky’s on him. Like, _on top_ of him. Body plastered against Steve’s like there’s a grenade somewhere and Steve’s a helpless dame.

“It’s okay,” he manages, but Bucky’s full weight is holding him down, and Steve blames the injuries in his arms when he tries and fails to push him off. His fingers feel blistered and he’s probably chafing away the soft new skin that’s just grown there, but he puts his hands on Bucky’s shoulders anyway. One metal, one flesh. Bucky’s _so warm,_ always running hot. It might be a super-soldier thing. Or it might just be a Bucky thing.

Steve squeezes gently. Bucky grunts. They’re touching everywhere, chest to chest, hip to hip, cheek to cheek. Bucky’s legs are bracketing his own. He can see the bruising better, now. Finger marks up and down Bucky’s neck. Bucky’s ear is next to his mouth so when Steve repeats himself— _It’s okay, Buck, it’s fine, it’s safe_ —he knows Bucky can hear him. A nurse appears in the door and Steve waves her away behind Bucky’s back. Her eyes widen when she sees the metal handcuff torn from the wall, and she disappears. Probably calling for back up.

Bucky turns his face to the side, following the sound of the departing nurse. It pushes Steve’s head further into the pillow and now Bucky’s hair is in his nose, tickling. It smells familiar. Apple. It’s familiar because Bucky uses Steve’s shampoo. Bucky smells like home. He breathes deep and it tickles again, making him laugh. Bucky leans back slightly to look at him, worried. The metal cuff is still attached to the arm. There’s a bit of wallpaper hanging off it.

“It’s nothing,” Steve tells him, still laughing. “Your hair.” Light. Giddy. He absently reaches up to tuck the hair back behind Bucky’s ear, and he’s both surprised and warmed when Bucky doesn’t flinch away. His hands are sore enough that touching Bucky should _hurt,_ but it doesn’t, not really. Bucky’s apple hair. They’re still pressed together. They don’t have to be, but Bucky hasn’t moved. Steve thumbs gently at some of the lines that have grown on Bucky’s face. Not scars. Skin. The creases next to his eyes.

Bucky turns his face. Infinitesimal. Steve’s palm is now against his cheek. Neither of them move. Bucky is frowning gently, and Steve thinks that he looks… hopeful. Scared. Like whatever Steve does next could break him. His eyes are wide where they meet Steve’s. Steve doesn’t breathe, and neither does Bucky. Steve isn’t himself any more, and he thinks that if Bucky so much as blinks, he’ll be lost. If he moves his thumb it’ll be against Bucky’s lips. If he moves his pinky he can tuck it beneath Bucky’s ear. He thinks that he could touch Bucky, now, anywhere, and Bucky would let him.

“Am I interrupting?”

The thing, whatever it was, shatters, and Steve is just Steve again. What had he been doing? Bucky rolls off him, face impassive once more, and Tony looks awkward in the doorway, half in the Iron Man suit.

“Guess I’ll knock next time,” he says to no one in particular.

“There was a noise,” Steve explains.

“Yeah, yeah, a nurse with a trolley. Guess I should remember to keep Sergeant Jumpy over here away from loud noises.” He sighs. “So much for adamantium restraints, then.”

Bucky gets to his feet and looks down, curling in on himself. “Sorry,” he whispers. Hands behind his back.

“He’s not mad at you,” Steve tells him. Bucky’s hair has fallen like a curtain across his face, and he peeks at Steve from behind it, then at Tony. Steve’s throat aches. “You’re not in trouble,” he says. “Tony won’t hurt you.”

“Nah,” says Tony, blasé. “I’m pleased. I needed a new challenge. Something stronger than adamantium, huh?” He takes one quick step forward, arm extended as though he’s going to clap Bucky on the shoulder, like a friend.

Bucky flinches, hard, and drops to his knees. He bends forward, fists still clenched behind him, until his forehead is almost on the floor.

Steve’s chest aches.

“Hey,” he says, “no, Bucky, it’s not… don’t kneel.”

Bucky stands immediately, and somehow that’s even worse.

“I didn’t… that wasn’t an order, Buck. You’re allowed to… You can do… that… if you want. Or stand. If you want. No one’s gonna hurt you.”

Bucky looks at him again, confused, and Steve feels shame like razorblades in his belly. Bucky isn’t even himself, doesn’t know how to say no, and Steve had been _touching_ him, only two minutes ago. He’s disgusted with himself. He wants to apologise, immediately, but Tony is still in the room.

“You’re safe,” he says, instead. He wills it to be true.

 

 


	7. Steve

They’re back at Stark Towers, and Steve is getting drunk. Or, at least, he’s _trying._ Trying really, _really_ hard. He’s gone through everything on his own floor; some beers left by Sam and a bottle of champagne (French, like Tony had promised). It hasn’t made him drunk. It just makes him want to piss.

In the bathroom he avoids his reflection. He doesn’t want to see what Bucky saw at the hospital. His own face as he touched his best friend’s cheek like it meant something. Shame. He’s worse than scum. Bucky would never have wanted that. _Steve_ doesn’t want that. He washes his still-pink hands in water that is too hot. He can feel Bucky’s cheek beneath his palm. He washes harder. The pink skin begins to peel—it’s too fresh—but Steve knows it will be healed before tomorrow.

Bucky is reading some shitty sci-fi fantasy in their shared lounge room. He is unburnt, though he told Steve that his head felt like what Steve’s arms looked like. Steve avoids his eyes as he scurries out the door. He hates leaving Bucky but he hates being near him, too. At least Bucky isn’t alone, now. Friday’s on watch.

He doesn’t bother knocking when he reaches the penthouse. Tony waves at him from the couch as he stalks into the kitchen, opening cupboards at random.

“Next to the toaster,” Tony calls from the other room. He already knows what Steve’s after. Steve’s pink hands look ridiculous as they grab at a bottle of whiskey, cracking it open without thinking twice. It’s probably expensive, but Steve doesn’t care. He pours it straight into his mouth and ignores the burn. Wishes it was worse. _Bucky went through worse._

He finishes the bottle and finds another one—vodka, this time. Of course it had to be Russian—before he joins Tony in the other room. Tony holds out his glass and Steve fills it before taking another swig. They’re facing the TV but it’s not on. There are glass windows over the whole west wall, and they watch the sunset in silence. Soon Steve will have to go downstairs, where he’ll make two cups of tea and check with Friday that the security policies are in place. What a routine.

He chokes down the last few mouthfuls of vodka and gets up to find something else. More vodka. He fills Tony’s glass. Clear like water. The sun is almost at the horizon. He peels the label off the bottle and then sticks it back on upside-down. The sun droops lower. The whole room is yellow, then gold, then pink, then, for the briefest moment, brilliant red. It looks like they’re drinking blood. The sun is gone.

“Fuck,” Steve swears quietly. He doesn’t want to do anything quietly. He wants to hurl the bottle out the window. He drinks from it instead.

Tony hands him his empty glass. “It took seventeen seconds for you to get to the room,” he says as Steve fills it.

Steve thinks about all the things that could happen in seventeen seconds. He drinks. The metal arm could have crushed Bucky’s trachea. Drink. It could have punched out his teeth. Drink. It could have reached for a gun. Drink, drink, drink. There are faster ways to silence someone than simply cutting off their oxygen.

“Fuck,” he says again.

“Language,” says Tony weakly. It’s an attempt at humour. Neither of them laugh.

“The arm needs to come off,” Steve says.

“I’ve designed a new scanner.” Tony finishes his drink. Steve pours him another. They’ll need another bottle soon. “Friday’s building it downstairs as we speak. It should be ready in a few days.”

“Three days, seven hours,” Friday’s voice pipes in.

“And til then?” Steve asks.

Tony sighs. “Sleep in his room, I guess? So you can get to him faster? I’m testing different restraints, but there’s nothing strong enough to attach them to. He’ll just bust through the wall, or the bed.”

“I can’t sleep in his room, Tony.” Not after today. Not after the… thing… when he had touched Bucky’s face and Bucky hadn’t pushed him away.

“I’ve seen the Smithsonian, pal. I know you shared a place back in the 40s.”

“That was different.”

Tony eyes him. “You afraid he’ll hurt you?”

Steve doesn’t reply, and Tony’s mouth quirks. Up, or maybe down. Steve can’t tell.

“Ah,” Tony says. “It’s like that, is it. You’re afraid that _you’ll_ hurt _him._ ”

“ _No._ Not like you’re thinking, anyway. We’re just friends, Tony.”

Tony says nothing and the silence gets his thoughts across just fine.

“It’s just…” Drink. “He’s still so…” _broken, hurt, healing._ “He needs more time. To be alone. To remember himself. I’ll just make it worse.”

“I think he wants you there, Cap.”

“Tony, don’t start. Bucky’s not like that.”

They drink again. It’s truly dark now, but neither of them moves to turn on a light. Steve is not drunk. At least he tried.

“I’ll do it,” Tony says suddenly. “I don’t sleep well anyway. Who knows. Maybe sleeping in the same room as a serial killer will be just what the doctor ordered.”

He’s offering Steve a way out. Steve desperately wants to take it, but his mind brings up an image. Bucky on a little video, lying on his back. The metal arm around his neck. Or, worse, reaching up. Not reaching for Bucky’s throat. Reaching for Tony. In Steve’s mind, Tony is the one touching Bucky’s face.

He doesn’t know what this thing is. He doesn’t know what’s going on. But there’s a small, cruel part of him that doesn’t want to share it.

He’ll say yes, though. It’s the right thing to do. But Tony must see his face, because he’s smiling when Steve turns around.

“S’ok, Spangles. You won’t hurt him.”

Tony already knows that Steve will do it. Steve knows as well.

He’ll pull a mattress into Bucky’s room, extra blankets, extra pillows. He’ll sleep on the floor. Bucky will try to argue him out of it, or maybe he won’t. Steve will put a mug of tea on Bucky’s bedside table, and another one on the floor next to his mattress. They won’t talk. Not really. Steve will say goodnight, and Bucky will mumble something that could be the same word. They will both know why Steve is in the room, though they won’t say it. If they say it then it might happen. Taboo. Bloody Mary. Say her name three times and she’ll appear.

Steve will stay awake for hours, listening to Bucky breathing. If Bucky dreams, Steve will be there. If Bucky’s arm… tries something, Steve will be there.

He will do it. He _will_. Whatever else is in his head can go rot. Bucky’s more important.

The empty vodka bottle gets left by the kitchen sink. The label is still upside-down.

 

 


	8. Bucky

He’s getting better, he thinks. Sam’s set him up with this lady, someone to talk to about all the fucked-up shit in his head. He had thought that only crazy people needed psychs, but then again, he’s about as crazy as it gets. Poison in his blood. Smoke and mirrors in his head.

The lady is nice enough. Though sometimes she does not-nice things. Asks him about Hydra. Makes him go outside every now and then. (She wants him in the sunshine. He doesn’t think he deserves it. He sits at the window, so the glass is between him and the sun. A compromise.)

She also told him to start talking about the nightmares. She said that he didn’t have to deal with them alone. He can’t tell them to her, though. She’s got tiny little glasses and her hair done up in a ponytail right at the back of her head. He wants to protect her, even when she makes him talk about the bad stuff. She tells him that she can handle the dreams, too, but Bucky’s not so sure.

So he tells Steve instead.

He’ll be neck deep in blood, or fighting the cryo machine (it’s always alive in his dreams), or some bug-faced monstrosity will be right up in his face, and then Steve will be there instead, holding the metal arm and telling him it was just a nightmare. Not real. All in his head.

Bucky thinks that his head is as real as the rest of him, but he doesn’t say that to Steve. What he does say is, “They were putting me under. The machine kept grabbing my ankles.” And Steve nods, like it’s easy as that. Like Bucky’s sloshy barbed wire brain doesn’t have to be his forever.

And the thing is, it works. Sort of. He still has the nightmares. Shadows coming to suck at his legs and the sound of his own scream in brick rooms. But then he remembers telling Steve that exact thing— _I was in a chair. There were shadows on the floor and every time I touched them they ate me_ —and then the dream is a little less real. Steve says he’s not shouting as loud, either. Though that might just be optimistic Steve.

So the dreams are okay. They’re making it work. Bucky likes to curl into Steve, after. The shadows can’t creep up behind him when Steve has an arm across his shoulders. They watch the sun rise just a little at a time.

The other dreams are different. The lady calls them flashbacks, even though they don’t flash. There’s no way out of them. No light at the end of the tunnel. Steve tries to talk him through them, too, but it’s not the same. Once the arm gets an order it has to see it through, right to the end. Dragging Bucky behind it, if necessary.

Bucky’s waiting, like Steve, for the magical piece of equipment that Tony will someday create. A scanner to read the arm. Or take it off. Or something like that. Tony’s tried everything, but nothing can get through the armour. Nothing’s strong enough. ‘Cept Steve, that is. Holding the arm against the mattress while he waits for Bucky to come down from whatever precipice he had been living through.

The flashbacks are so concrete. Bucky can _touch_ them. The smells get in his nose. Sometimes he just has to wait for them to end, since apparently his vital signs are normal throughout. But sometimes something else happens. The lab coat man will be there, whispering orders, or else someone will say something in Russian. And then the metal arm reacts.

Then the lights in his room turn on and even though Bucky can see the bedroom, and Steve, and the stupid mattress that Steve insists on using, he’s not there. Not really. He’s with Hydra.

Steve can’t do much, once it starts. Just watch and intercede if Bucky tries to hurt himself. Last month he’d sat with Bucky for half an hour while Bucky demolished the bathroom door.

“It was a Turkish diplomat,” Bucky tells him, after. There are bits of wood sticking up out of the plates of the metal arm. He doesn’t add anything else. He hates the flashbacks. He hates the feeling of his skin when they’re over. He hates that Steve has seen what he was like when he was still the Winter Soldier. “Don’t look at me,” he says, and showers for hours. He pries the wooden splinters out one at a time.

It’s not always so easy. Sometimes Steve has to use the electric thing, Black Widow’s Bite, to knock Bucky out. They both hate that. It makes Bucky’s head ache, pressure building behind his eyes until he thinks they might fall out.

Friday alerts the other Avengers, sometimes, if things get out of hand. Iron Man, usually, or whoever else is in the building. Falcon caught him mid-air, once. When the arm had launched him out of a window.

Sometimes Friday makes a mistake, too. It’s not always Bucky fucking things up. Last week he had reached for a glass of water in the night, and Friday had flicked the lights on. The glass had smashed in Bucky’s hand as he startled. Steve had leapt on top of him, holding the arm down, keeping the broken glass away from any major arteries.

“I’m fine,” Bucky had told him, trying to shake him off. Steve had only held him harder, and Bucky had let himself relax into it. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, they used to say. Do they still say that? Steve’s hips had felt good against his own.

There are fewer flashbacks these days, anyway. It’s getting better, he thinks.

Which is why he feels his stomach drop when he sees heavy black boots one night. He was sitting peacefully in a garden—a nice dream, for once—but the boots aren’t not going to stand for that. They crush tulips beneath their feet as they approach.

The lady had taught Bucky something, some way to get out of these moments, but he can’t remember. He’s not there. He’s here. The black boots stop right in front of him. He’s not in a garden, after all. He’s never seen flowers in his life. He wouldn’t recognise colour if he saw it, anyway. There’s just black and red and grey.

He’s not under the table, this time. He’s on top of it. No shirt. No trousers. Just a collar with little studs on the inside. And something behind him, too. A plug. A tail. He’s the centrepiece for tonight’s meal. The guests are admiring how well trained he is.

Obedient. A good word to remember.

His stomach growls, and the men closest to him laugh. One of them pokes him in the side. Another tugs at the leash attached to his collar, forcing Bucky’s head around, to watch him as he swallows a steak, mouthful by mouthful. Bucky hasn’t eaten in… days? His stomach makes another noise. He can control a lot of his body, now, but he cannot control this one thing. His empty belly gives him away.

There’s a man at the head of the table. He is wearing a suit, not combat blacks. “Is puppy hungry?” he asks. Cold smile. Bucky bows his head. He is not supposed to feel human things, but he is not supposed to lie, either. Luckily he doesn’t have to answer. The man in the suit raps his knuckles on the table. “Heel,” he says. English, thank God. Bucky doesn’t know why he is thankful. He slithers off the table. On his knees at the man’s feet. The thing inside him shifts uncomfortably. The man taps his shoe on the floor and Bucky doesn’t have to be told twice. He leans down to lick them clean. Shiny spit on the toes until he can almost see his reflection.

When he is done the man tugs at his hair to make him look up. “Your bowl is in the kitchen,” he says. “Bring it here.” Bucky nods. He will be allowed to eat. But then, of course, the man has to make it worse. He orders Bucky again, in Russian. And Bucky can _feel_ it taking root. The metal arm reacts instantly, getting a hold of the leash and tugging. Somewhere, a light flicks on. _Captain Rogers._ The arm yanks the leash, forcing Bucky to follow. He’s being led by his own arm. Except, not his arm. Hydra’s arm. He knows that it shouldn’t feel like he’s being dragged along. The metal arm is attached to him, after all, but he can’t help it. It tugs against his collar and it feels exactly as if someone else is tugging it, pulling Bucky behind.

 _Yes, okay,_ he thinks. He can obey this, too.

The kitchen is close to the dining room. He crawls along a hallway, desperately trying to keep up with the arm as it tugs him faster, faster. The studs on the inside are pressing into his neck. Someone is walking beside him. He tries to turn his head to see who it is but the arm yanks viciously and he chokes a bit instead, coughing.

“Bucky,” someone says. It’s Steve. Steve shouldn’t be here. Bucky grunts at him.

“Get out,” he tries to say. They’re in the kitchen. Bucky’s bowl isn’t on the floor, so he rummages around in some drawers. Can’t remember where the bowl is usually kept.

“What are you looking for?” Steve says. “Let me…”

Bucky is kneeling on a kitchen floor and the tiles are hard against his knees. He thinks that he might be wearing pants, but that can’t be right because he can _feel_ the tiles on his bare flesh, and something jostling inside him as he moves. There are two Buckys, again. But there's only one metal arm, and it has its orders. He pulls open a drawer. It’s full of knives. Someone yanks him away and the metal arm reacts instantly, throwing a punch in the direction of the obstruction. The hands disappear. He wasn’t looking for knives anyway.

“No,” says a voice. “No, Friday, I’m fine. He’s not hurting himself. Don’t wake up Nat.”

He’s found the bowl. For a second he thinks it’s ceramic, but it isn’t. It’s metal. A dog’s bowl. He hates it, but the metal arm doesn’t care. It grabs it from his real hand and shoves it into Bucky’s mouth. It chinks dangerously against his teeth.

“Oh, Buck.” Steve’s still here.

He opens his mouth to say, “Fuck off,” and the bowl clatters from his lips. The metal arm wrenches the leash savagely, a warning, and Bucky cries out. He feels the studs break his skin, and lines of blood trickle down the back of his neck. He wants to beg, but there is no one to hear him. He must take the bowl to the other room. The metal arm will do it with or without his help. He puts the bowl in his mouth before the arm can punish him again.

“Bucky, God, Bucky, it’s Steve. I’m here. If you can hear me, if it gets too bad, Buck, just… give me a sign, Buck, please. I can use Widow’s Bite. I’m right here.”

There is no Steve. He’s naked in a hallway, and every movement makes the tail wobble painfully inside him. The metal arm is in front of his face, wrapped in the leash. He is alone.

 

 


	9. Steve

“Captain Rogers.”

Steve is _awake._ It’s muscle memory, now, making him search for Bucky before his eyes are even open. If someone said his name in daylight he’d probably do the same thing. Fear jogs silly patterns into his heartbeat.

Bucky is crawling across the room, right past Steve’s mattress. It’s one of the bad ones. The flashbacks. He can already tell. Steve desperately wants to reach out and touch him, but his hands can have unintended side effects when Bucky is in the middle of it. He watches instead, ready to take action if Bucky looks like he might do something dangerous.

Bucky’s not doing anything dangerous, though. Just crawling. On three limbs. Odd. The metal arm is raised in the air in front of him, and Steve anxiously thinks that Bucky is following something in the fist, like a fish follows a light. Bucky crawls out the door after it, and Steve follows.

“Bucky,” he whispers. He can’t help himself. He wants Bucky to turn around and say it’s a joke.

Bucky makes an aborted motion, as if he is about to do just that, but then the arm moves abruptly forward, and Bucky surges after it, choking.

_He’s in a collar._

“Get out,” Bucky grunts. He knows Steve is there.

Steve is getting used to the sudden rage that hits him at times like these. He has learned to ignore the clenching of his fists. Sam told him to breathe deep when it gets bad, but it feels like a betrayal when Bucky’s got something around his own throat.

So Steve follows. Closely. Carefully.

In the kitchen Bucky starts opening drawers and Steve, trying to be helpful, holds things out to him. A hand towel. A scrubbing brush. A bottle of water. Bucky ignores him as though Steve isn’t even there, and that’s fine, it is.

Until it isn’t. Bucky’s going for the knives. Steve slaps his hand away, but despite all this time he’s still surprised when the metal arm fights him, landing a solid punch to the side of Steve’s jaw.

“Miss Romanov is on speed dial, Captain!” Friday isn’t alive but you wouldn’t be able to tell from her voice. She sounds frightened.

“No,” he says. “No, Friday, I’m fine. He’s not hurting himself. Don’t wake up Nat.”

He kind of wishes that Bucky _would_ hurt himself. He doesn’t _actually_ want Bucky injured, of course, but if Bucky at least _tries_ to, then Steve can use the electric current to knock Bucky out. (They had tried drugs once, too, but they were slow and unreliable for serum-enhanced metabolisms.)

At least Bucky seems partially aware of his presence, this time. Steve has stayed with him for every second. And now Bucky’s found what he was looking for and it’s not a weapon, after all. It’s a bowl. He looks at it for only a moment before the metal arm shoves it against his face, and Bucky doesn’t fight it. He grips it in his teeth.

Steve’s heart has gone way up to the base of his throat. He thinks if he speaks too loud he might accidentally cough it out. “Oh, Buck,” he whispers.

Bucky glares at him over the rim of the bowl, and he tries to say something but Steve misses it as the bowl clatters to the floor, somehow not breaking, and, almost immediately, the metal hand jerks forward. Bucky jerks simultaneously, as though there really is a rope connecting his neck to his hand. He makes a short scream, but it’s not real, he’s not _actually_ getting hurt, even though it probably feels like it. Steve has one of Nat’s bracelets in his hand, clenching hard, and he’ll use it in a heartbeat if he thinks for just one second that the pain in Bucky’s head is worse than the pain of the electric current.

He’s babbling. Doesn’t mean to. Bucky’s dipped his head to take the bowl back between his teeth.

“Give me a sign,” Steve begs. He wants to help. He can’t reach Bucky when he goes inside himself like this. “God, Buck, please.” He keeps talking, to calm himself, mostly, but also to remind Bucky that he’s there. If even a small part of Bucky’s brain can hear him, then it’s worth it.

Bucky doesn’t look at him again, and Steve follows him back into the bedroom, where Bucky gently places the bowl on the ground, before sitting back on his heels. He grimaces slightly, as though the position is uncomfortable, but Steve can’t see how to make that better, either. He kneels on the floor, too. Right next to Bucky’s knees.

“I’m right here,” he whispers. “Your safe. I won’t let them hurt you.”

He prays like crazy that that’s a promise he can keep.

Bucky’s hands—both of them—rest casually on his thighs, and Steve mimics the pose. He stares at Bucky’s face for some kind of recognition (there isn’t any) and waits. Bucky’s eyes are half closed, impassive, and he’s staring past Steve to some invisible middle distance. Neither of them moves for perhaps ten minutes. Steve looks at Bucky, and Bucky looks at nothing, and the empty bowl sits in between them.

Steve contemplates moving the bowl away, just to see what would happen, but he doesn’t want to risk a fight, so he combs Bucky’s hair with his fingers instead. Pushes it off his face. Bucky acts like he can’t feel it, but Steve doesn’t pull away. He wants to hold Bucky, it’s a physical ache, but he has spent the last few months forcing himself to ignore these aches, so he keeps his touch light. It’s just a comfort. It’s nothing else. Fingers carding gently.

At some unheard command, the metal arm reaches up. Steve tenses, jerks back, clenches the bracelet in his hand, but the arm isn’t going for Bucky’s throat. It latches into his hair, where Steve’s hand just was, and Steve sees strands get pulled out of Bucky’s scalp as the fist tightens its hold. Bucky’s face is impassive, waiting orders, and then the metal arm pushes down, forcing Bucky’s head lower.

If asked, Steve could probably have guessed that it was coming to this. But it’s still a shock. Rage threatens to swallow him again. The metal arm shoves Bucky’s face into the bowl on the floor, and Bucky’s tongue peeks out to swipe against the bottom.

The bowl is empty. The real bowl, that is, but Steve can only guess at what Bucky is being forced to eat, in his head. What they made him eat when he was still the Winter Soldier.

“It’s okay,” he soothes. “There’s nothing there. It won’t hurt you. It’s almost over.”

He hopes it’s true. Bucky usually only lives out one order at a time.

Bucky chokes on whatever he thinks is in his mouth, and the metal arm shoves him down so hard that Steve’s afraid his nose is going to break against the bottom of the bowl.

“Friday,” he shouts.

“Vitals are normal, Captain. He can still breathe.”

Steve can’t, though. He holds Nat’s bracelet a scant inch above the metal arm. He feels like he’s standing on a cliff’s edge, ready to jump. He’ll pull the shock switch if the arm so much as twitches, he’s sure of it.

“Bucky,” he calls. “Bucky, Bucky.”

Bucky gasps against the cold ceramic, makes a gurgling noise like he’s trying to swallow, and then it’s over. His whole body goes limp and Steve catches him before he falls flat. Bucky’s skin is furnace-hot, as usual.

“Bucky, it’s okay. You’re back. I’m here. You made it.”

Bucky is still and silent, doesn’t move for a full five seconds, and then he’s pulling away, like Steve knew he would.

“Enjoy that, did you?” he asks, all venom.

“'Course not, Bucky. You know I didn’t.”

In one swift move, Bucky slams his fist into the little bowl. It shatters instantly. Shards stick up at odd angles out of Bucky’s knuckles.

“Don’t _watch me,_ ” he hisses.

“You know I have to, Buck. I’m trying to—”

Bucky snarls, and shoves Steve back, getting to his feet. Steve hadn’t even realised that he had been leaning forward.

The bathroom has a new door. It slams menacingly behind Bucky’s retreating back.

 

 


	10. Steve

Steve showers in his own room. He doesn’t bother cutting it short. Bucky will be ages. Hours. Steve feels guilt like hot knives in his stomach, and he puts his hands against the shower wall so the water goes down his back. Bucky had accused him of… of _enjoying_ the flashback. Like Steve had gotten off on watching his best friend crawl around like some kind of _animal._

He desperately wants to punch something, but whatever he punches will probably break, and he’s cost Tony enough already.

Guilt flares bright again.

He hadn’t enjoyed seeing Bucky like that. He _hadn’t._ Not… not with a fucking bowl between his teeth, not like that. He wants Bucky smiling. Laughing. Enjoying himself. All the time. But he’s pictured Bucky on his knees, before, too.

He scrubs at his skin. The water isn’t making him cleaner. His stomach has butterflies but they’re not made of nerves, they’re made of razorblades.

There’s something wrong with him. What kind of sick monster thinks about their best friend like that, while Bucky’s still recovering from the last whackos who had thought they could own him.

He gets out of the shower quickly, before he punches out the tiles. Bucky’s not the only one who can destroy rooms with his bare hands.

It’s nothing, he tells himself as he dries his hair. These feelings are nothing. He’s just glad to have his best friend back, that’s all. Anything else is just… his brain telling him to make sure Bucky is okay. That’s all it is. Bucky’s still his friend. There isn’t anything more. He repeats it until he can convince himself it’s the truth.

He makes breakfast. Bucky’s favourite things. Waffles, with big slices of banana and maple syrup on top. Thick, crunchy toast. Pancakes with sugar and lemon. Hydra hadn’t managed to destroy Bucky’s sweet tooth, so Steve gets whipped cream as well. Screw it. Why not.

He’s just cutting up the last of the strawberries when Bucky finally walks in, eyeing the plates. Steve immediately realises that it’s too much. He’s trying to apologise with food. Bucky will see straight through him.

“Sorry,” he says, automatically. Great, now he’s apologising for his apology.

“You make all this just for me, Stevie?”

Steve thrills right down his spine, straight to his fingertips. He loves that name on Bucky’s lips. He gives Bucky a hopeful smile. “I’m hoping you’ll leave me at least one pancake,” he says reasonably.

Bucky looks him dead in the eye. His therapist has been teaching him this. How to look at someone as an equal, not a superior. Steve can’t get enough of it.

“Sorry,” Bucky says. “For what I said. Before. I didn’t mean it.”

“Jeez, Buck, you don’t have to apologi—”

“Yes, I do. I think…” he shivers. “I think they’re getting better. I don’t know. It’s easier to bring myself out of it. Even though I still gotta… You know. The orders. But I knew you were there.”

“That’s good, Bucky. That’s a good thing.”

Bucky winces. “But it felt like you were… like you were a part of it.”

“Buck—”

“I know you weren’t though,” Bucky reassures him. “I know that’s not… not what you think. About me.”

“It isn’t,” Steve agrees fervently. “Bucky, I’d never. You’re my best friend.”

Bucky’s face gives nothing away. For a second Steve thinks he’s sad, but it’s just his impassive expression.

“I know,” Bucky says. Quiet.

“I’m sorry too, Buck.” _For thinking about you when I’m alone._ “Sorry that you have to go through this still.”

They eat breakfast together, and Bucky leaves a pancake for Steve, after all. Steve does the dishes, like he does after every meal, and Bucky watches him, humming a tune they’ve both forgotten. It could be Brooklyn. It’s so familiar.

Then Friday has to go and spoil it.

“Mr. Stark is ready for you,” she says. Crisp. Like she hadn’t watched Bucky crawl down a hallway a few hours ago.

Steve gives Bucky an encouraging smile. “Maybe this one,” he says.

 

\-----------

 

Tony has a new scanner. Something like an MRI, he says, though neither of them knows what that is. Supposedly, it’s going to measure miniscule vibrations in the different metals of Bucky’s arm, to give them an idea of what’s in there. It’s enormous. And pink. There are little flower patterns all over it. Bucky had accidentally broken the first scanner when they had tried to hook him into it, and now Tony makes them all pink. Hopefully Bucky won’t ever mistake this floral monstrosity as Hydra tech. That’s why he’s standing, too. Chairs had been a bad idea, and tables equally so. He’s got his face turned towards the machine as it whirrs, and Steve knows that if he looks away his ears will tell him that he’s back _there_ , stuck in a different machine.

“How’s it feel?” asks Clint. One of the Avengers is always present, when they try a new scanner. Ostensibly to keep them company, though in reality Steve thinks that they’re there in case Bucky flips out. It’s not a bad idea, he has to admit.

“A little tingly,” Bucky grouches, still staring at the pink contraption.

“Those are the magnets,” Tony shouts from somewhere on the other side of the machine. “Try not to move. Buttercup will be done in a moment.”

Bucky scowls. “It’s not called Buttercup,” he says.

Clint cackles, and Steve can’t help a small smile either.

Something clicks, and the machine powers down. Steve approaches slowly as Bucky carefully eases the arm free.

“Gimme a second,” Tony calls. Bucky rubs the arm as though it hurts, and Steve massages his shoulder where the flesh turns into metal. The muscles always knot, here, and Bucky doesn’t mind Steve’s hands on this part of him.

“So,” Clint says, conversationally. “I hear you went on a homeware-destroying rampage this morning?”

“It wasn’t—” Bucky says, at the same time as Steve says, “He didn’t—”

They look at each other. Steve waves Bucky on.

“It wasn’t a _rampage,_ ” Bucky insists. “It was _one bowl._ ”

Clint leans back on the desk, completely comfortable in a room with two super soldiers. “Sure,” he says, easy as you please. “If that’s the story you wanna stick with.”

“Hang on,” says Steve. “How did _you_ find out?”

“I have my birdies.” Clint winks.

“Friday!” Steve barks.

“I didn’t tell him, Captain,” the AI chips in.

“Then who—”

“That would be me,” Tony says, coming around the corner, eyebrow raised at Steve’s indignant expression. “What? I’m automatically updated whenever Stark Towers is under attack.”

“Under attack!” Steve splutters. Now it’s Bucky’s turn to laugh.

“Mr. Stark has designed new protocols,” says Friday, “to distinguish between the property, Stark Towers, and the property _of_ Stark Towers.”

“I’ll go for the bar, next time,” Bucky warns.

Clint laughs but Tony looks outraged. “You wouldn’t dare!”

“Did, uh, did Friday mention anything else?” Steve asks. _Real casual, Steve,_ he tells himself. He just hates the thought of someone else seeing Bucky crawling down a hallway.

Tony gives him a look. “Her privacy policies won’t let her,” he says. “I don’t get notified unless someone’s in danger. Why do you ask? Got a porn collection you’d rather keep secret?”

“Tony…”

“Don’t worry, Casanova, her policies cover the naughty stuff, too.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “How’re the scans?”

“Um,” Tony says, suitably distracted. “Well, we got _something._ ”

They all crowd around. Even Clint. Steve had expected a picture, of the arm, or something, but it’s really just some graphs. He’s had enough of graphs for one lifetime, he thinks. But Tony’s pointing out a few lines.

“I got it by pointing Buttercup _through_ the body, instead of through the arm. So we can only see the very front section, but hey, looks good, right?”

“Does it?” Steve says. It’s a lot of mumbo to him.

“Nothing that looks explosive up at the join,” Tony says. “Though that might be a nerve connector there. And who knows what’s in the rest of the arm, I’m guessing it’s not cotton candy, but if we want it off then the join’s the important bit, anyway. Right?”

Steve’s eyes widen, “Nice work, Tony,” he breathes.

“Hey, it’s about time we got some results. I’ll calibrate Buttercup.” He yanks a piece out of the machine and tosses it into the blast furnace at the back of the lab. “Melt her up, Friday. I’ve got an idea for getting the rest of the arm.” The furnace wooshes into life, though they can’t feel its heat. It’s designed to shape adamantium and the containment is a foot thick. Tony piles up a few other pieces to melt down. He’s like a spoiled kid. All smiles. “With any luck you’ll be Hydra-free by Christmas,” he crows. He goes to clap Bucky on the shoulder, then thinks better of it and hits Clint instead. They’re all grinning.

“That would be nice,” Bucky murmurs. Hydra free.

Steve feels giddy at the breakthrough. It’s been so long since they’d heard good news. Something is finally going right.

So of course something has to go wrong, as well.

The flashbacks have been getting more spaced out, once a month or thereabouts, so Steve’s not expecting the lights to flick on that night, so soon after the last one. _Captain Rogers._ He’s disoriented, to say the least. That doesn’t stop him from reaching out, though. The instinct to find Bucky.

Bucky isn’t hard to find, because Bucky’s on top of him.

Bucky’s real hand is fisted in Steve’s shirt, and the metal one is raised up. There’s not a single flash of recognition in Bucky’s face as the metal hand comes down towards Steve.

_He’s going to kill me._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're so close to the end I can almost taste it.
> 
> Next chapter will be dark again. I'll put some warnings and a summary in the notes for those of you who want to skip.


	11. Bucky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blanket trigger warnings on this chapter. If you want to read a chapter summary instead check the bottom notes.

It’s too bright. And dark as well. There’s only one flickering light. On, off, on. There’s only one room. They’re in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but sleet and snow outside the window. He’s on the floor, but he can hear the wind howling. It’s the same noise he used to make, when they put him in the machine. Now he begs for it, begs for it. Put me back, please. Put me back. Make me forget. Dirt still in under his fingernails. Hydra.

It’s post-op. The men are drunk. On success. On booze. On the stink of sweat mixed with the blood of someone else. If Bucky is quiet enough they will forget he is there.

But they have not forgotten. One of them motions him forward. “Soldier!” he orders. It does not come out as, “Soldat!” The man is speaking English, not Russian. Though Bucky is fluent, now. He’s learned by force. In between cryo and assignments. It is important that the man is speaking English. Bucky doesn’t know why. He stands in one smooth motion and approaches.

“A successful mission,” the man says. His teeth are yellow stained and somewhere in Bucky’s memories is the knowledge that he has felt those teeth in his skin. The knowledge does nothing to him. There is nothing _in_ him, nowhere for the memory to attach. He is the white page beneath the print. He is a tree that never grew. He is a metal fist with nothing attached. Hydra.

He nods.

“You will congratulate them,” the man says. Bucky knows what he means. His body is shaped for it. They’ll put him back in cryo with the stains of their pleasure still in his clothes. The men will probably be dead when Bucky next wakes. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, this thought gives him something that could be described as pleasure.

He is on his knees again. The light overhead is flickering, on, off, on, no, on, no, no, no. Off.

The man grabs him by the collar. Bucky could break his whole arm off in less than a second. The thought doesn’t even occur to him. His body is shaped for this, too. The breaking, that is. And everything else. Hydra.

The next bit is in Russian and somewhere, another Bucky’s stomach drops. “You will congratulate every person in this room,” the man says. “And yourself.” The grip on his collar tightens. “But don’t you dare come until they have.”

“Yes, Sir,” Bucky whispers. He turns to the first person. He is lying down, on a mattress, but that’s not real. He is sitting in a chair. The metal arm reaches for the fly in the man’s trousers. Somewhere, a light flicks on. _Captain Rogers._ The man tries to get up. Off the chair. Off the mattress. Bucky pushes him back down. He has his orders. The metal fist reaches up. It will follow orders by force, if it has to. But the man is not fighting. He’s grinning down at Bucky as Bucky positions himself in front of the chair. On the mattress. The fist lowers. Lowers. Reaches into the man’s trousers.

“Bucky!”

There’s only one person in the room. And Bucky, as well. That’s good. It won’t take long to follow this order. But there are two Bucky’s again and when his vision flickers there are a dozen men in the room, a least. This will take hours.

“Bucky, can you hear me?”

Obviously. There’s just one person. It’s Steve. Were there dozens here, before? The metal hand closes around flesh, draws it out. He’s kneeling on a mattress. Or in front of a chair. It’s hard to tell.

“Bucky! What—Friday, is he awake?”

“Vitals indicate so, Captain.”

“Bucky, is this a flashback? Do you need— _oh._ ”

Bucky has closed the metal fist around Steve. Around his penis. The flesh is soft, but Bucky can already feel the change in it. This will not take long, he hopes.

Steve raises his hand. Pushes at Bucky’s chest. Not soft. The metal arm releases him to slap the hand away. Not soft, either. Something clatters to the floor a few feet away. It looks like a metal bracelet.

“Friday!” Steve gasps, and Bucky has run out of patience. His real hand reaches up to cover Steve’s mouth.

“Let me,” he growls.

The man in the chair leans back, smirking. “Sure,” he says. “Do it nice. How I like it.” He takes a swig from a bottle with no label. Bucky blinks and the man is not in a chair. He is on a mattress and he says nothing, because Bucky has covered his mouth. It’s Steve.

“I’ve gotta,” Bucky tells him. That doesn’t make sense. “Orders,” he tries again.

The metal hand reaches back down, and Bucky thinks it’s going to reach for Steve again, but it bypasses him completely, goes straight to Bucky’s combat pants. Oh. He had forgotten this part of the order. Though the arm has not. He pulls himself out and lines himself up with Steve. They’re touching. They look good next to each other when Bucky leans down. They’ll look even better when they’re both hard.

Steve shouts something into his hand and Bucky tightens his grip, pushes Steve’s head into the pillow. He’s on top. He’s got the advantage. He uses his knees to hold Steve’s legs together. His name is Bucky but Steve’s the one kicking up, bucking out.

“Hold still,” Bucky orders. “Steve!” Steve looks up at him. Betrayal in his eyes. Bucky can’t think about that. The metal hand slots around them both. Not big enough to circle all the way. Close enough. It squeezes. Too hard. A warning. “Hold still,” Bucky orders again. Desperate. “It’ll punch you out if it has to.” Steve is shouting again. Doesn’t matter. Bucky is obeying. The metal hand slides up. Root to tip. Both of Steve’s hands flail until they latch on to the metal wrist, tugging, tugging. The arm doesn’t even notice. It goes back down. It should be rough but something is easing the way. He doesn’t know the English word for it. Fluid. Steve’s, maybe. Or his own. When the arm goes back up a finger swipes through it, sharing it from head to head. Bucky isn’t the one giving the orders. He never would have thought of this. Hydra.

The man in the chair is grunting softly, swigging from the bottle. “Faster,” he says. Bucky goes faster. The metal arm squeezes, pulses, strokes one, two. Bucky’s hard and so is the man in the chair but Steve isn’t. Steve’s babbling against his hand. Bucky wants to hear it and he’s got control of one of his hands, after all, so he pulls it back.

“Friday!” Steve blurts. “Get—” Bucky covers his mouth again, and grinds down. He doesn’t know who Friday is and he doesn’t want Steve thinking about someone else right now. He’s finally got a response. Steve is hardening up against him. Bucky’s body is built for this. He knows what he’s doing. He’s good at this. Obeying orders. Hydra.

Steve clearly doesn’t think so. His hands pull away from the metal wrist; from trying to make Bucky stop. They grab at Bucky’s shoulder. Push on his chest. It’s making it harder to obey orders. Bucky growls at him and then, when he doesn’t stop, the metal arm reacts, grabbing at both Steve’s hands. Bones grind together. The arm pushes Steve’s hands down, onto the mattress above his head. It stretches Bucky out. His body weight holding Steve down when he jerks up. It pushes them together. Down there. Hard flesh on hard flesh. Slippery with precome. That’s the word. Bucky rocks his body down. He tries not to think too hard about it. If he stops then the metal arm will punish them both.

He rolls his hips and it feels good. Better than it should. “Steve,” he gasps. “Help me.”

Steve shouts something at him. Muffled. Gibberish. Not English _or_ Russian. His teeth are in Bucky’s palm—when did they get there—and Bucky thinks about his own blood in Steve’s mouth. Hydra. He can’t ride Steve properly. He doesn’t have the right leverage. But he can shove down. Swivel. Jerk his hips. His balls are on top of Steve’s and when he grinds down his spine goes all electric.

“Feels good,” he tells Steve. He knows it feels good for Steve, too. He is good at this. The metal arm whirrs and tightens. Steve’s wrists almost crack. The arm will crack them if it has to.

The man in the chair is close. So is Bucky. But Steve won’t be there with them and Bucky’s not allowed to come until Steve does.

Steve’s in an old t-shirt. He never used to wear them to bed. When did that change? Bucky’s teeth find the collar of it, and he wrenches back, hears a rip, tries again. It’s not perfect. He can’t get it all the way off but he doesn’t need that, anyway. He’s learned to work in any condition.

Duress. A familiar word. He should remember it. Hydra.

When enough of Steve’s shirt is ripped Bucky uses his nose to push the scraps away. He’s at a terrible angle. One hand over Steve’s mouth. The metal hand up above, holding Steve’s wrists. Their hips are still together and Bucky’s trying to get his mouth down, tonguing along Steve’s chest until he finds what he’s looking for.

This isn’t Hydra. He would have already been ordered away. It’s not Hydra. It’s not.

The metal arm whirrs and of course he’s wrong. It is Hydra. It always is. Hadn’t someone told him he’d be Hydra free?

Free. That’s definitely a word to forget.

Steve’s nipple is already hard and when Bucky closes his lips around it Steve flails like he’s never been touched here before in his life. He shouts something that ends on a groan when Bucky uses his tongue. His hips grind down. God, that feels good. Hydra. He needs Steve to come. Hydra, Hydra. His teeth sink into the sensitive nub and Steve screams. That’s it. That’s what he needs. Hydra. He pushes down again, again, why is Steve not coming?

“Let go,” Bucky begs. His spit is shiny on Steve’s chest. “I can’t until you do.” Hydra. Steve yells something. It might be Bucky’s name. When Bucky’s teeth find him again that’s it. It’s over. Steve’s back comes clear off the bed, even with Bucky on top of him, and his cock is jerking, orgasm hitting hard. Globs of it shooting up his chest and mushing down in between them when Bucky’s body curls over him. Bucky writhes on top of him. This is not part of his orders. He can’t stop. It’s smearing all over his own naked chest and on the tatters of Steve’s shirt and on his erection.

He wants to come. He needs to. He can’t. There are other people in the room. He’s not allowed to come. He shakes his head. There are two Buckys. He’s trying to count. Are there more men or is it just Steve. He’s followed orders. He has to, has to… The metal arm reaches for him. Jerks him. It’s agony. He can’t come.

“Steve,” he begs. _Help me. Help me._

Steve is like taffy under him. Warm. Left out in the sun. Pupils blown so wide and Bucky’s hand is still on his mouth. Bucky’s weight is balanced on Steve’s hips and lips. Pushing him down. Steve’s hands find his shoulders but they’re not shoving him away. They’re holding him. Like he’s been let loose and Bucky’s the anchor.

“Is there anyone else?” Bucky asks him. He’s not an anchor. He has orders. Steve will know. God, Steve. Steve always knows. It’s not Hydra. It’s not. He’s got orders. He’s being good. The metal fist is squeezing him, too hard, too good. “Is there anyone else?” he almost screams. “Steve, _help!_ ”

Steve’s eyes are wet. Is he crying? He shakes his head, just once. _Just me._ His hands fall off Bucky’s shoulders and they land in Bucky’s lap. Not jerking him, but it’s enough. Steve’s hands on him. And Bucky gasps and comes. Instantly. Stripes of it landing on Steve, on the metal hand. There’s no one else here. It’s just them. Steve’s hand curls gently, beneath where the metal hand is still tugging him and it’s good, so good. He feels like he’s seized up and Steve’s still between his legs. Hands on Bucky’s. Holding him up. Holding him steady. Bucky was wrong. Steve’s the anchor, after all.

“Oh fuck,” he wheezes, and the metal arm goes lax. So does Bucky. He collapses down. Anchor or not. Steve’s hands around him. Steady as they always are.

“Is it over?” Steve whispers. “Are you awake?”

“No,” he says. He doesn’t know which question he’s answering. He passes out.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoilery trigger warnings: this chapter contains rape, forced orgasm, forced handjobs, and non-consensual restraining. If you want to skip it here’s a chapter summary:
> 
> Bucky has a flashback of a Winter Soldier post-op where he was ordered to sexually service every man in the room, including himself. He is partially aware that he is actually in the bedroom with Steve, and is confused as to whether he needs to service the Hydra soldiers, or Steve. They get mixed up in his head. When Steve tries to fight him he knocks the Widow’s Bite out of his hand and covers his mouth, which also stops Steve from calling Friday for help. He gives Steve a handjob, which turns to frottage when he needs both his hands to hold Steve down. They both orgasm, filling the requirements of Bucky’s flashback orders, and he passes out.  
> Please skip the chapter if it's not your thing
> 
> ALSO, while I have your attention… I’m part of the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico charity auction! Want some more stucky? Or another MCU pair? Come hmu and place a bid! It’s all for a good cause :D You can find my auction page here: <https://fandomlovespuertorico.dreamwidth.org/3482.html?thread=295834#cmt295834>


	12. Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *points at tags*

****He’s in the shower but he can hear Steve in the kitchen. Cooking. Baking. God knows. Steve needs to do it when he’s stressed. Bucky needs to calm down. Alone. Hot water that never ends. Did he ever thank Tony? Who invented these showers… Bucky will send them a gift card.

_Congratulate every person in this room._

He clenches his fist and the shower door loses its handle.

Not for the first time.

He hears a knock at the front door and Tony’s voice outside.

“Mornin’ Spangles. What’s got you so gloomy?”

“Tony, we need to talk.”

“Uh oh. This sounds like a break up. I hope you bought ice cream.”

Bucky wonders if they know he can hear them. Probably not. His ears are better than Steve’s. Always were. Even after the serum. He’s not supposed to eavesdrop. Maybe. That was one of Hydra’s rules. But he’s not supposed to be following Hydra rules anymore. Steve specifically said not to. So he listens.

“—what they did to him, Tony.” That’s Steve. “—fucking _forced him to_ —” Bucky’s never heard him swear before. Not even in Germany. He’s mad and Bucky… Bucky can’t think about that right now. Gotta wash it away, like he does every time. Enough hot water and soon he won’t remember it. That’s how it always works. Get it out. Get it clean.

Stark isn’t loud enough for Bucky to hear him, but Steve more than makes up for it.

“Yeah, I know they did some awful shit, Tone, I read the files too, but, _Jesus,_ he knew exactly—”

Some more mumbles.

“Then why the hell didn’t Friday call you!” Pause. “Don’t give me that shit, Tone, what if _I’d_ been on _him_? Huh?” Bucky doesn’t want to be listening to this. He puts his head under the water but Steve’s voice calls him back. “Tell me,” he’s saying. “Tell me Friday would have called for help if I’d had a go at him.”

Mumble. Bucky catches something about privacy policies. Steve explodes.

“—WAS _RAPE,_ TONY.”

Bucky doesn’t wait around to hear the end of it. He’s gone. Doesn’t even bother dressing. Leaves the tap running hot. Barely sees the lift as he bangs into it. Doesn’t pick a level. Down, he says. Up. Away. _Oh,_ he thinks. _Oh._ Bucky had. _Don’t think about it._ Bucky had. Bucky had… When the doors open he stumbles out.

He’s never used that word before. What Hydra did to him. _What he just did to Steve._ He can see where his therapist has been leading, all these weeks. He would never have seen it coming. Rape. Steve. _Steve._

Steve’s hand on his chest, pushing him back. Grabbing the metal arm, trying to get it off. Bucky holding him down. Bucky holding him down with his _whole body_ , not just the arm. He’d been obeying orders. It was just a memory. Something to get over. But it wasn’t. Not anymore. Not just a memory. He’s given it to Steve, now, too. Steve had thought Hydra was gone but it wasn’t, it wasn’t. It was still in Bucky’s head. Hydra. In his arm. Hydra. He’d brought it back home. Hydra. He’d taken it into Steve’s bed. HYDRA.

He’s in Tony’s lab and he doesn’t even know how he got there. The pink machine is split open, cords running out of it and benches shoved every which way, turning the lab into a maze. There’s only one clear path, leading right to the back, and there it is. The blast furnace. It’s open and waiting and all the pieces fall into place. He’s here. He’s made it. Hasn’t Steve always told him he runs a temperature? His body has been preparing him for this moment. The only way to get rid of the arm without putting Steve in danger.

The furnace isn’t big. It’s only supposed to take one piece of equipment at a time. But it’ll do. He might be harbouring a bomb but he won’t let the arm hurt anyone else. It’s gotta go. Hydra goes, or he does. One of Tony’s prototypes is hanging on a wall and Bucky uses the metal arm to rip the glove clear off. He’s going to need it.

He crawls into the furnace. It’s a tight fit but he can do it if he squats. His knees are right under his chin. His back’s up against the rear wall and his toes are peeking out the front. He curls them in and now he’s small enough to close the door behind him. Which he does. There’s a grimy square of glass at the front and through it he can see some of Tony’s lab. He’d prefer if it was Steve’s face. Still, it’s okay, isn’t it. As last stands go, this one isn’t so bad. Hydra vs. Bucky, the final showdown.

The prototype glove is ripped at the edges. Torn metal making jagged sharp ends that dig into Bucky’s skin as he pulls it over his hand. He doesn’t know how to make it work. Something bangs from outside the furnace and it’s Steve. Lab door flung open. Eyes so wide you would think that was all he was made of.

“That’s better,” Bucky says. The words come out kind of weird. He hasn’t got enough oxygen. At least if this doesn’t work he’ll be dead soon anyway.

Steve’s screaming. “Bucky! Bucky!” His voice is faint through the thick metal door.

Bucky smiles at him. Flexes his fingers. A shot of something—pulsar beam?—comes out of the glove and the door melts a bit. He’s welded himself in. He knows how the glove works, now.

“Tony! Get him out! Open the door!”

Bucky isn’t scared anymore. It’s going to be fine. “Sorry, Steve,” he says. “About last night. I won’t be able to do that ever again. You’ll be safe.”

“Bucky! What, I—Bucky, no!”

“Evacuate the building,” someone says. Tony’s here too. “Friday, open the goddamn door.”

“Malfunctions detected, Sir!”

“Bucky!”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says. “I heard you. Upstairs. You’re gonna be okay. I won’t be able to hurt you again.” He puts the glove right at the seam of his shoulder. Wraps his fingers and watches the glove as it obeys. Metal giving way to skin. What a novelty. The glove tightens around the place where his shoulder becomes Hydra’s arm. Not all the way. But close enough.

“Bucky, please. What are you—Don’t! There could be a bomb! I wasn’t—I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about them, about what they did to you. About what they keep forcing you to do. Bucky, God, I don’t want this. I don’t want you to do this.”

“Not your choice, Stevie.” Bucky’s whispering. The fingers tighten.

“Please, God, Bucky, _please,_ I’ll do anything. We’ll find another way. This’ll kill you, Buck, please, let me help, open the door.”

Iron Man’s there, now. Straining at the furnace. Steve’s got his hands at the window, punching, trying to break through. There’s blood on his knuckles. Bucky’s never felt safer.

“It’s okay,” he says. “You always said I ran a temperature, right, Steve?”

“Hot as a furnace,” Steve whimpers. Wet cheeks. “Bucky, come on, open the door.”

“It’s okay. They can’t order me to hurt you anymore.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Friday,” he yells. “Translate to Russian. Open the door.”

Bucky tilts his head and then Steve’s yelling it at him. Open the door. Open the door. In Russian. Steve doesn’t know Russian. Bucky looks at his arm to see what it will do. He can feel the orders, in his head. The need to obey them. But it’s not the same.

“You’re not Hydra,” he says to the tiny square of Steve’s face that he can see.

“Open the door! Open the door!”

“Please,” says Bucky. “Not Russian. It won’t work. I don’t want the last thing to be Russian. Say something else, Stevie. Come on. Please.”

He tightens his fingers and he’s going to do it. He’s going to.

Steve’s sobbing. “Please, Bucky, please, God, no. No, please, don’t, I love you, don’t do it. Open the door. Bucky. Bucky, please. I love you, I love you.”

Bucky sighs. It’s perfect.

He flexes his fingers.

The glove goes off.

The arm explodes.

So there was a bomb in there after all.

 _At least I’m free,_ Bucky thinks. Steve’s eyes are at the window. Blue. Pretty. They’re the last thing Bucky sees when his heart finally stops beating.

 

 


	13. Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for late update (I feel like I say that every time I post)  
> But I'm increasing the chapter count to add one teensy tiny extra scene at the end of this.

It’s not.

It’s not.

It can’t.

There isn’t.

Bucky’s in there. _He’s in there._

Open!

Open the door!

Bucky, _please!_

Steve’s hands are blister-burnt. The door is hot. Too hot. Scalding pressure. Something’s gone off inside it.  _Bucky’s_ gone off inside.

Bucky, God, help me, save me. Open the door.

I love you.

I love you.

He’d finally said it, and Bucky had.

Bucky had.

He’s in Brooklyn. In the bath. He’s had an asthma attack and it’s left him weak. Too weak. Can’t stand up. Enough energy to keep himself above the water until Bucky gets back. _Jesus, Stevie. Can’t leave you alone for five minutes, can I?_  Warm hands beneath his arms. Pull him up. Towel around his shoulders. I love you. Shoulda said it then.

He’s in Austria. Bucky’s on the table, mumbling a number. His own name. Break the restraints. God, Steve hates Bucky in handcuffs. _I thought you were smaller._ Arm over his shoulder. I love you. Shoulda said it then.

He’s on the highway. Bruised from a metal fist. Project Insight is a very real possibility. The Winter Soldier loses his mask and it’s Bucky, of course it is. _Who the hell is Bucky._ They get captured and Steve needs to see his face again. I love you. Shoulda said it then.

He’s in Brooklyn again. Holiday, he called it. Bucky’s laughing in the room next door, punching his own stomach, and Steve has to haul the arm off him. But Bucky’s already awake. _I was making it better._ Steve’s holding his arm like maybe it will hold Bucky together. This immaculate human who’s seen so much and came back to Steve anyway. I love you. Shoulda said it then. I love you.

Steve gets his fingers into a groove, somewhere. He can’t see it. Smoke in his eyes. Smoke in his lungs. Smoke and mirrors. A magic trick. Blink and you'll miss it. Blink and Bucky's gone. Off the side of a train. Behind a metal door. He pulls. Pulls. Tony’s nearby, too. Putting out a fire. The door is so hot. Steve thinks that maybe he’s bending it, or maybe it’s partially molten and he’s reforming it. It’s going to melt through his fingers. He gets his hand further in and he’s never tried so hard in his life. He’s heaving. Muscles in his arm cramping, straining, not strong enough. Wasn’t strong enough to save him.

God, please, no.

The door rips off with a screech. It sounds like the end of the world. More smoke. So much of it. Pouring out from the place where Bucky used to be. It’s in Steve’s eyes. His hands are in it, searching. Blind. He’s drowning. Again. Sinking down the edge of the world. The sea is rising up to meet him.

Bucky’s body falls into him.

His head is hanging.

Such an unnatural angle.

His whole left side is ruined. Bucky’s beautiful face. Smouldering skin. A smell Steve never wanted to learn. He gets his trembling fingers to the pulse point on Bucky’s other side, where the skin is still whole, but there’s nothing underneath it. No steady beat. Bucky's gone. A bit of his mind fractures off. A piece of him lost. He remembers this. War torn bodies. The sound of artillery in the distance. Limbs missing, like Bucky’s is. Blood and metal thrown around like the battlefield was a playground and the men were only toys. Bits flung into trees.

Bucky.

Bucky.

He gets Bucky on his back. On the floor. Bucky shouldn’t be down there. Room spinning. Steve has his hands on a body. The body used to contain Bucky, but now it's just ruined flesh.

Lips on skin that’s still hot.

This shouldn’t have been our first kiss.

Bucky’s chest rises with Steve’s breath. Again. Again.

Hands on the sternum. One third down. He has to press harder because it’s Bucky and of course he’s still fighting Steve even now. Body like concrete. Pushing blood along veins that have ceased to flow. There’s a heart in there somewhere. There has to be. Steve can feel his own. Thudding so hard that he’s sure it’s enough for them both. But it’s not, it’s not. What a betrayal.

He’d finally said it. He’d finally told Bucky. _I love you._ And it hadn’t been enough. His love felt all-encompassing, like it was swallowing him whole, like the world was made of nothing except that final truth. But it still hadn’t been enough.

Lips, again. Not a kiss. Tilt his head back so the air can go down properly.

Come on.

Bucky.

In the movies people gasp back to life. So dramatic.

It’s nothing like that.

When Bucky’s lips move against Steve's it’s nothing. It’s everything. All those sunrises. Just a bit at a time. It’s still not a kiss. Bucky’s lungs are expanding on their own and Steve’s crying, sobbing, huge gulps of air as though he was the one who had died. He _had_ died. One whole half of him blasted to hell behind a metal furnace in Tony’s lab.

“Oh please, oh please, oh please,” he’s babbling. Friday’s issuing orders. Bucky’s chest rises with another breath and Steve is lost forever. _Bucky._ Hands on Bucky’s neck and there’s a hummingbird pulse in there. Butterflies under Steve’s fingertips. The next breath doesn’t come so he provides it himself. Keeping Bucky alive by sheer force of will. “Oh please, oh please,” he can’t stop. Bucky. _Bucky._ Wartime training kicking in. Roll him onto his side. Let him cough. Keep him breathing. Please, God, keep him breathing. Skin still smouldering gently.

A stretcher. Flashing lights. They roll Bucky away and Steve tries to get in after but Tony hauls him back. “You can’t go with him!”

_Try and stop me._

“You can’t go with him! There’s no room!”

The ambulance pulls out and Steve sprints after it. Chases it all the way to the hospital. He’ll never stop doing this, he thinks. Never stop following Bucky.

Is it enough?

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost finished o.O


	14. Bucky

This is… less than ideal. He won’t be able to fight like this. He’s about a tonne too heavy. And he’s also light as a feather. And he _hurts_. Christ, he hurts. Hydra’s got him, after all. It was all a dream. They’re going to put him back in cryo. There’s stuff plastered over him. He won’t be able to escape. Won’t be able to fight. Won’t be able to see.

He tries it anyway. Cracks one eye open. 

Room so bright. Flowers on the bedspread. Everything pink.

What the—

Not Hydra?

The next breath comes easy, and he hadn’t even realised that the last ones had been a struggle.

He can’t turn his neck, but from the corner of his eye he sees Steve. Asleep. Awkward limbs splayed out on a couch that was never made for a super soldier. Shirt rucked up. God, he looks so… The light has made a halo of his hair. Were his lips always that red? His hands are bandaged white.

Bucky must make a noise because Steve blinks himself awake and then suddenly he’s _right there_. Can’t get close enough. Right in Bucky’s face. Not touching him. Hands like butterflies. Bandages fluttering at the end. Hovering over Bucky's cheek. Like he’s scared Bucky will break. Pretty eyes.

“Don’t you ever,” he’s saying. Bucky can’t hear him. He's watching the shape of Steve's lips. _Don't you ever._ He reaches up. Arm like a dead weight. Gets a fistful of Steve’s shirt. Drags him down. Steve lets him.

“Stevie?” Bucky slurs, but he doesn’t hear the reply because he’s out.

\----------

“—couldn’t salvage any of the arm. The explosive must have been there to stop anyone getting their hands on Hydra tech.”

“I’m glad, kinda. I never wanna see it again. Good riddance.”

“I’d hate to hear what you have to say about _my_ tech, Spangles.”

Bucky kind of needs to piss but he likes this too much. Their voices sound close. He wants to think they’re in the same room as he is. The pressure in his bladder fades.

“When can we take him home?”

“Give him a break, helidad. Let the doctors do their job.”

Doctors. Bucky can’t help it. Tenses up. God, that hurts. He doesn’t need a doctor. He’s fine. The doctors will test him again. There'll be knives. And blood. _Get away._ There’s a gun in his holster, isn’t there? Left hip. He moves the arm but nothing connects. Something’s wrong. He’s fine. He’s not. Not enough air.

“Open your eyes,” says someone nearby. Bucky’s frozen solid. They haven’t taken him off the ice. There's nothing of him left. The doctors have already seen to that. If he looks down there won't be anything to see. His eyes blink open anyway.

_Pink._

_Pink?_

_It’s not Hydra. He’s fine. It's Steve._

“Hey, punk,” he murmurs. Steve’s face like a homecoming. “Miss me?”

And he loses Steve’s reply this time, as well. Out like a light.

\----------

The third time he wakes up it’s for real. He knows exactly where he is. Steve’s not there, but Black Widow is. His mouth feels like dry sandpaper.

“Got any water?” he asks, except it comes out as, “Gornnnter?”

Nat knows what he means. Holds a straw to his mouth and Bucky’s weak as a kitten. Been hit by a bus. He can barely get the water up the straw. It’s so much effort that he can’t enjoy it even after he’s swallowed. His mouth still tastes like ass.

“Fuck me,” he swears when he gets his breath back. “How long have I—?”

“About a week. You should be dead, really. Steve’s gonna take your head off as soon as he knows you’re okay.”

“Where—?”

Nat points with her chin and Bucky’s neck actually _creaks_ as he turns to the left. Steve’s asleep, again. On the tiny couch. But Bucky isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at the spot on the bed where his arm’s supposed to be. Nat gives him a full five seconds to contemplate the empty space.

“You gonna freak out?” she asks.

“Haven’t decided.”

They sit for another minute.

“There’s none left, right?” He wants to touch the empty space. Make sure there’s no metal lodged anywhere.

“You got it all.” She sniggers. “Plus some extra. Wanna see a mirror?”

“I dunno. Do I?”

“Leave him alone, Nat.”

Steve’s awake. Hair stuck every which way. Bucky wants his hand in it. Mess it up a bit more. Smooth it flat.

“Mornin’ sunshine,” he says. Light. Like nothing’s wrong. “Black Widow was just telling me how God damned beautiful I am.”

“She’s not wrong.” Steve sits on the edge of his bed, where Bucky’s metal fingers should have been. He’s smiling like he’s got a secret and. Uh oh. Oh God. It must be bad.

“Where’s the mirror,” he croaks.

\----------

“It’s not _that_ bad,” Steve wheedles.

“I look like Frankenstein.”

“Have you ever seen Nightmare on Elm Street?” Tony’s in the car with them. “You’ll love it. Freddy Kruger. Spirit Animal.”

Bucky pulls his hood further over his face. Most of the scarring has disappeared but some of the damage had been permanent, even for him. His ear is gone. He’s lucky to still have the eye. The hair on that side will never grow back.

“You can hardly see it,” Steve tells him. “You’re still healing. It’ll get better.”

Bucky just grunts. It’s been two weeks already. He’s never had to heal from something this bad before. Not since the freight train. “Yeah, well, spare a thought for us mere mortals,” Sam had told him when Bucky had complained.

They’re heading home today and Bucky feels a little adrift. When had Stark Towers become home? He’s so tired. _All the time._ And Steve’s been acting weird. Not _bad_ weird. Good weird. Bringing him things. Helping him dress. Taking the mirror away when Bucky’s about to break it. It’s setting Bucky’s teeth on edge. He remembers Steve screaming. His name. And the door. The glove blasting his arm off.

Steve hasn’t mentioned it yet.

Bucky tries not to think about it.

It’s the same when they get home. Steve helps him into the bathroom. Offers to stay. “I can still piss on my own, thanks.” He falls asleep on the toilet anyway but wakes when Steve carries him into the bedroom.

The mattress is on the floor. Bucky’s vision goes sideways and he is instantly aware that he will never let Steve sleep down there ever again. He tenses. Just a fraction. But Steve leans in anyway, angling his ear to catch whatever it is that Bucky’s about to say.

“You still sleepin’ here?” Bucky asks. Casual.

“Sure,” says Steve. “You still having nightmares?”

Bucky thinks about it. He hasn’t had one in two weeks. He’s been too out of it, probably. Which doesn’t make any sense because he’s sleeping twenty hours a day and surely by now he should have…

“Dunno,” he says, eventually. He’s got his arm over Steve’s shoulder and he fakes stumbling so Steve has to take him right up to the bed, ease him down onto it. At the last second Bucky yanks on his shirt so he topples in after him, and it's suddenly easy. No tension left. They’re both laughing. Breathless. Legs tangled together.

When the laughter dies they don’t say anything for a while. Just lie there facing each other. Bucky feels the tug of sleep but there’s something else tugging him, too. Steve’s eyes. The memory that sits between them.

His arm is underneath him. The empty side doesn’t hurt so much. He’s getting better. He rolls onto his back, anyway, so Steve can’t see the damage.

Steve draws him forward again. Ghosts his fingers over the place where flesh once gave way to metal. Bucky can’t look. Can only watch Steve’s face. Catalogue the lines that never used to be there. The ones he’s caused. Bucky’s lines.

“Are you angry?” he whispers.

Steve’s smile is so sad that Bucky’s heart might break all over again. “Yeah,” he whispers back. “Was _so_ angry, Buck. Coulda killed you.”

Bucky snorts, but there’s no humour. “Beat you to it.”

Steve punches him on the chest. Gentle. “Don’t _ever,_ ” he can’t get the words out. Has to try again. “ _Ever_ do something like that again.”

Bucky touches Steve’s lips. Where he’d put his hand. When he’d forced Steve… “I hurt you,” he says.

Steve catches up his fingers and squeezes them gently. “Wasn’t you,” he says.

And that’s all there is to it. They stay like that.

“Do you remember?” Steve eventually asks. Bucky doesn’t have to ask him what he’s talking about. The blast furnace. The arm.

“Not really,” he admits. He remembers Steve’s eyes, mostly.

“Do you remember what I was saying?”

Bucky makes a face. “Open the door.”

“After that. In English.”

Bucky remembers, but he wants Steve to say it. “Remind me,” he says.

Steve doesn’t move but somehow they’re closer together. They’re breathing each other’s air.

“I love you,” Steve whispers.

Bucky knows what it feels like to have his heart stop beating, and this is kind of similar. He closes his eyes.

“Say it again.”

“I love you.”

It’s so easy. It doesn’t even feel like falling. They’ve been here all along. When Bucky opens his eyes Steve is so close, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to lean into his lips. The tiniest kiss. A bare fraction of a heartbeat.

Steve is the one to break it.

“You should sleep,” he says.

“Stay?”

Steve does. Just like that. The whole twenty hours. Wakes him to watch the sunrise and then lets him slip back to sleep. At some point their hands meet in the night. When Bucky wakes up his fingers are curled with Steve’s.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus chapter 15 soon because I almost left this fic without even one happy smut scene and that's just not allowed.


	15. Steve and Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Domestic aftermath

They make it work. Somehow. They do weird couple things. Bucky cooks and Steve does the dishes. They move into Steve’s room. Too many bad memories in the other one. Steve sleeps on Bucky’s right side because Bucky still hates the wound on the other side of his face, where his ear used to be, even though Tony’s made him an implant. “Specially designed for super-soldier hearing.”

Bucky makes a joke about eavesdropping but Steve doesn’t laugh.

They don’t kiss when they’re in bed. Steve can’t stand it. Hates Bucky horizontal. Keeps checking Bucky’s pulse like he thinks one day it won’t be there. Bucky doesn’t blame him. Pretends to sleep when Steve’s hand finds his chest at night, making sure he’s still breathing.

Bucky’s got his own problems, anyway. He’s still got the nightmares. And the flashbacks. Though neither are as bad as before. He isn’t forced to obey the orders anymore, but that hasn’t stopped his brain from issuing them. At least the potential damage has been reduced, now that the metal arm is gone.

Tony has made him a new one of those, too, but Bucky only ever wears it on missions.

That’s the other thing that’s changed. They’ve started fighting again. Little things, at first. Disputes. Squabbles. Small time stuff. Then some alien dicks tried to invade D.C. so of course they had put the suits on for that as well and Bucky had never noticed Captain America’s uniform before but _by God_ did he notice it when Steve was sunlit and yelling, issuing orders and standing tall and being the superhero Bucky had always known him to be.

He’d shoved Steve up against a wall as soon as they’d gotten home. Ripped at the buckles. Got down on his knees to get what he wanted. Steve still in uniform except for his cock.

They’re good at that. Bucky on his knees. Or Steve. Just mouths and hands and their names on each other’s tongues. It’s the other stuff that’s harder. When one of them is itchy and desperate and begging for it. Bucky never wants to be on top, keeps remembering Steve’s hands pushing him away. But Steve doesn’t want him underneath, either.

They make it work.

In the shower, sometimes. On the sofa with the TV turned down low. They argue about it, pick fights. His therapist says that’s normal, too. Steve wants Bucky happy and Bucky wants Steve to think of himself as well.

That’s what they’re doing now.

“I told you, I’m happy with whatever—”

“I _know,_ but Stevie, baby, come on. There’s gotta be something. Let me do something to make you feel good.”

“ _You_ make me feel good,” Steve grumbles. “I want whatever you want.” He collects the dishes with a pout. Tantrum Steve.

Steve is surprisingly vanilla in his tastes. Bucky shouldn’t be _that_ surprised, really. This is _Steve_ after all. But it makes it almost impossible to find something new and exciting.

“I don’t need new and exciting,” Steve complains, when Bucky brings it up, and they make that work too.

There’s always one surefire way to get Steve in the mood, though, and it just so happens to be one of Bucky’s favourite things, too. He’s only got one arm but he knows how to use it. Getting up behind Steve while he’s washing the dishes and digging fingers into the muscle of Steve’s back. Sliding up to his neck. Gentle squeeze. Rub back down. Around. Lord have mercy, the _muscle_ on Steve’s new body. Jaw dropping. Will Bucky ever get tired of it?

Steve’s head rolls forward. The plates instantly forgotten.

“Don’t stop,” he begs, as if Bucky ever could. Bucky plasters himself up behind Steve and scratches down his right shoulder—the easiest one to reach. Steve groans like he’s being paid for it and Bucky lets his erection press into Steve’s ass.

“Stevie,” he whispers. Always a winner. Steve shudders from head to toe and Bucky lives for it. These tremors. He gets as close as he can, bites Steve’s ear. Presses kisses into the back of his neck. Steve smells like dishsoap and the casserole they had for dinner. Bucky licks at him and he’s lucky there’s a bench in front because Steve’s knees give out a bit and Bucky uses the excuse to crowd him in even closer.

“Got anything for me, Stevie?” he asks. Innocent. Sweet. Steve fumbles around for his belt buckle and then Bucky doesn’t feel so sweet any more. Wants Steve to feel _good._ He reaches for Steve’s hand and guides it to his cock, wraps the soap-slick fingers around him. “Touch yourself,” he whispers in Steve’s ear. “Do it slow.”

Then he drops down. Takes Steve’s pants with him. Uses his hand to tip Steve forward slightly, so he’s leaning over the sink. Steve makes a noise like he’s losing air and that goes _straight_ to Bucky’s cock.

He presses his face to Steve’s ass. He should probably hate it down here, what with all the time he’s spent on his knees before, but for some reason it’s not the same. It’s _Steve,_ for one, and Bucky can’t get enough of him. He’s good at this. He gets his tongue in. Uses his hand to pull out one of Steve’s cheeks, and Steve’s got a free hand, too, which he uses to help. Spreads himself for Bucky. Bucky will never get enough. He licks his way further in. All Steve. One finger at the same time, spit-slick and so tight it’s got Bucky seeing stars just from this.

Sometimes he thinks Steve isn’t real. Can’t be.

Tonight is not one of those times. Steve’s as real as anything.

Bucky gets two fingers in him before Steve comes. The sink is empty, thank God, and Steve’s voice cracks as he shouts Bucky’s name. Bucky kisses the lowest vertebrae, the one right above the swell of Steve’s ass, and he doesn’t move his fingers until Steve’s calmed back down. Then a gentle push and Steve’s hardening again. Super soldier metabolism keeping him going long after anyone else would have finished.

He gets a third finger in, just. Wiggles softly, waits for Steve’s breathy moan to finish. Then he slips free and stands. Turns Steve around so the small of his back is against the counter. Steve likes it best when they’re face to face.

There’s a plant on the windowsill behind them. Silly thing. _To brighten up the place._ Steve had bought it for Bucky. Charming, dorky Steve, visiting a garden to buy a hydrangea for Bucky, of all people. He buries his smile in Steve’s neck and sucks a kiss there, so the bruise will bloom just like the flower. He pulls Steve’s thigh up around his waist.

“Hey, baby,” he says as he lines himself up. Steve’s all pupil and wide mouth. Just how Bucky likes him.

“Bucky, Bucky,” Steve’s chanting his name. Already so out of it. “Bucky, God, Bucky.”

Bucky pushes in slow. It’s best that way. Makes it last. Steve’s heel is against his ass, trying to pull him in but Bucky’s setting the pace tonight.

When he’s in as far as he can get he rests his head on Steve’s collarbone. Right hand on Steve’s hip. Sometimes it feels weird to have only one arm. He wants to hold Steve tight. But tonight one hand’s all he needs.

“Love you,” Steve says, into his hair.

“Punk,” Bucky replies.

Except that’s not what he says at all.

“Love you, too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read along and to all of you who have hit the kudos, bookmark or subscribe buttons. This was my first foray into MCU and hopefully i'll be venturing into the Stucky realm again soon. If you want to leave feedback I will love you forever. Come talk to me in the comments :)
> 
> If you want to share this fic on tumblr the post is [here](https://omgbubblesomg.tumblr.com/post/167387030901/to-dream-or-not-to-dream-omgbubblesomg-captain)


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